About me

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I am Professor of GeoHumanities at Royal Holloway, University of London.​ My research is focused on the advancement of the GeoHumanities, a field that sits at the intersection of geographical scholarship with arts and humanities scholarship and practice. Empirically, I explore the geographies of artworks and art worlds. I'm interested in the elaboration of core humanities concepts of aesthetics, creativity and the imagination from a geographical perspective. My current research focuses on the underground as a site of much needed new environmental imaginations.

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Collaboration underpins my research practice and alongside written research, I've produced artist’s books, participatory art projects and exhibitions with individual artists and a range of international arts organizations including Tate, Arts Catalyst, Iniva, Furtherfield and Swiss Artists in Labs.

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I am the author of For Creative Geographies (2013) and Creativity (2016), co-editor of Geographical Aesthetics (2014) and Geographies of Making Craft and Creativity (2017). My latest monograph exploring practice-based research, Geography, Art, Research: Artistic Research in the GeoHumanities was published in 2020. In addition, I've written over 80 peer-reviewed publications.

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My research and collaborations are funded by a range of bodies including the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), The Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the Arts Council, and the National Science Foundations of the US, Switzerland and China.

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I have been privileged to give over 70 invited lectures, keynotes and plenaries in 20 different countries. I have also examined 35 doctoral theses in nine countries. In 2016, I was delighted to be awarded the Royal Geographical Gill Memorial Award, the Phillip Leverhulme Prize and an AHRC Leadership Fellowship.

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This was followed, in 2020, by the award of a €1.95 million five-year European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant, as part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, for my project THINK DEEP: Novel Creative Approaches to the Underground. I have since been awarded an ERC Proof of Concept grant, THINK DEEP: Imagine? to experiment with the potential of arts-based resources to shape imaginations of artisanal mining in Cambodia. 

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At Royal Holloway, I serve as Research Director in the Department of Geography and was the founding Co-Director of the Centre for GeoHumanities (with Professor Veronica Della Dora FBA, now directed by Professor Felix Driver FBA FAcSS).

 

Between 2019 and 2023, I served as the Director of the Technē AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership which awards 60 doctoral studentships per year, across nine academic institutions.​ I am a Panel Chair for the UK Research & Innovation Future Leader Fellowships Peer Review College and was the Chair of the Royal Geographical Society Social & Cultural Geography Research Group until 2017 and have also served on their Medals and Awards Committee. I was a member of the Geography and Environmental Studies expert sub-panel for the 2021 UK Research Excellence Framework assessment.

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I am Managing Editor of the journal Cultural Geographies, and founding Associate Editor of GeoHumanities. I have also served as external examiner - previously for the Schools of Geography at University College Dublin and at Maynooth University, and currently at Cambridge University.

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I studied at the University of Nottingham, UK (BA Geography, MA Landscape & Culture, PhD). My doctoral thesis was titled, Geographies of Art and Rubbish: An approach to the work of Richard Wentworth, Tomoko Takahashi and Michael Landy and was supervised by Professor Stephen Daniels FBA FAcSS FSA.