Find a supervisor

A list of all our Geography PhD supervisors and their research interests.

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Initially, you should identify and approach a potential supervisor with compatible research interests and expertise. They will be able to help you to develop your proposed research ideas into a strong and viable project. The research interests listed below should help you find expertise in the topics that you wish to pursue.

Human Geographers

Supervisor Research Interests
Dr Megan Blake Food Poverty; food in cities; neoliberalism and food; food and third sector organisations; urban food plans; food and consumption; food and tourism; local food; consumer/retailer food waste; food and family practices.
Dr Stephanie Butcher Urban inequalities & informality in global South cities; global sustainable development; gender/diversity/ intersectionality; community/urban planning & development; social movements; housing and infrastructure; theories of citizenship, equality, social/environmental justice.
Professor Vanesa Castan Broto Global environmental governance; climate change politics; urban political ecology; urban sustainability transitions; social innovation and urban technology; participatory planning; governmentality.
Dr Jessica Dubow Cultural/Critical Geography; spatial and aesthetic theory; psychoanalysis; continental philosophy; critical theory with a specific emphasis on Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School and a focus on themes of exile, dislocation and displaced identity. Also: landscape theory and practice; postcolonial theory; geographies of religion and of psychoanalysis; South African history/culture.
Dr Daniel Hammett Forms and practices of citizenship; spaces for and practices of civil society; popular geopolitics.
Professor Peter Jackson Social and cultural geography; geographies of consumption; food and families.
Dr Juan Miguel Kanai Varieties of urban Entrepreneurial Regimes including eco-entrepreneurialism and homo-entrepreneurialism; culture-led regeneration; planetary urbanisation; territorial design and infrastructure networks.
Dr Dorothea Kleine Digital geographies; ICT4D; development theory; Fair Trade and ethical consumption.

Particularly, in the following areas

  • theorising engaged digital geographies
  • the capability approach and ICT4D
  • Big Data and new digital tools for participation and co-design
  • gender and ICTs or online representation
  • ethical consumption and digital tools
  • conceptualisations, translations and digital representations of fairness across spatial and cultural distance
Dr Ankit Kumar Climate justice, energy justice, energy transitions, infrastructure, environmental geographies, critical development studies and postcolonial studies.
Professor Simon Marvin

Telecommunications, infrastructure and mobility, sustainability, systemic transitions, climate change, ecological security and smart cities.

Dr Eric Olund Race, gender and sexuality; governmentality; urban life; critical theory.
Professor Richard Phillips

Cultural and Social Geographies of Difference: Religion, Race and Ethnicity; Sexualities and Genders - Politics and Spaces; Creative Methods and Fieldwork; Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies.

Professor Jenny Pickerill Eco-housing, eco-communities, environmentalism and community economies.
Dr Sammia Poveda

ICT for human development; critical agency, empowerment and social structures; psychosocial wellbeing; gender, class, race, etc (intersectionality).

Professor Bhavani Shankar Sustainable diets, climate and nutrition-sensitive food systems, food and nutrition policy evaluation and inequities in food systems and nutrition.
Dr Luke Temple Political and electoral geography, democratic theory and democratization, political participation, and patterns of digital engagement.
Dr Matt Watson Theories of practice, sustainability and social change, especially in relation to energy, food, water, mobility, waste. Cultural geographies of energy and environment - reducing demand, reducing carbon intensity.

Physical Geographers

Please read through the list of physical geography example PhD topics to get a flavour of the areas of research our staff are particularly interested in supervising.

Supervisor Research Interests
Professor Mark Bateman Sandscapes as an archive for understanding past depositional processes and environmental changes which have shaped the landscape we live in; periglacial and glacial environments; luminescence dating; coastal dune systems.
Dr Rob Bryant Earth Observation and Geospatial Technologies - and applications of these to aeolian processes, dust hazards and general themes within landscape/atmospheric fluxes and dynamics.
Dr Frances Butcher Glacial processes and landscapes on Mars, and Earth analogues.
Professor Chris Clark Palaeoglaciology (the extent and dynamics of former ice sheets) and palaeo-ice stream signatures and ice-stream operation; remote sensing; digital elevation models (DEMs); glacial geomorphology.
Dr Jeremy Ely Palaeoglaciology and glacial geomorphology.
Dr Julie Jones Southern Hemisphere and Antarctic climate change and variability; climate reconstruction from proxy data, long instrumental and historical records (including ships' logbooks).
Dr Sihan Li Fine scale regional climate modelling, especially at convection-permitting scale; multi-hazard and risk chain associated with climate change and impact modelling of multi-hazards; land-hydrology-climate interactions, predictability of hydrometeorological extremes, extreme event attribution; exploring large-scale and mesoscale dynamical drivers of regional hydroclimate change, and climate change impacts on wildfires, forest mortality, land-use change, hydrology and the energy sector; machine learning/AI application in seasonal and sub-seasonal forecasts.
Dr Stephen Livingstone Glacier hydrology (on palaeo and contemporary ice sheets); subglacial lakes; ice sheet reconstructions; ice-bed processes and landforms; meltwater erosion and deposition.
Dr Manoj Menon Soil physics and hydrology; soil structure development; root-soil interactions; soil compaction; soil pollution; soil-flood interactions; soil conservation practices; non-invasive imaging and modelling.
Dr Felix Ng Mathematical modelling of physical processes in glaciers and ice sheets and their environment interactions; ice sheet/stream dynamics of Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets; internal (radar) stratigraphy; Mars's cryosphere (processes, evolution, and landforms); physics of ice-core records.
Dr Tom Pering The measurement of sulphur dioxide, using ultra violet cameras; modelling via computational fluid dynamics and laboratory analogues of a variety of degassing modes from basaltic magmas, including: passive, strombolian, and lava fountaining; low-cost alternatives to previously expensive methods.
Professor Ed Rhodes Palaeoseismology and fault slip-rate studies; luminescence technical developments; low temperature thermochronology; grain tracing and transport rate; palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction; fluvial and aeolian geomorphology; grain mixing; surface processes; natural carbon sequestration.
Dr Andrew Sole Hydrology, dynamics and mass balance of ice sheets and glaciers, particularly the Greenland Ice Sheet and marine-terminating glaciers; physical and biogeochemical interations of ice sheets and glaciers with the ocean; quantifying ice flow using satellite feature tracking.
Dr Darrel Swift Glacial erosion and long-term landscape evolution; glacial sediment systems and landform evolution processes; glacier and ice sheet geomorphology and dynamics; glacier hydrology and fluvioglacial sediment systems; mountain geomorphology.

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