Culture, Space and Power Research Group

Staff in this theme, including two Philip Leverhulme Prize holders, conduct theoretical and empirical research in to the spatial politics of cultural practice in a variety of historical and geographical settings. Our research has strong interdisciplinary links (especially with history and anthropology), shapes international debates, and has close synergies with research on the geographies of biosciences in the Health, Place and Society theme. Enquiry into global connections and diasporic identities enhances our understanding of the cultural practices that make new geographies from domestic to global scales. For example, research on relatedness in Irish diasporic genealogy, local and cross-border histories in Northern Ireland (Catherine Nash), new writing technologies in the English East India Company (Miles Ogborn), the politics of home and diaspora among Anglo-Indian women (Alison Blunt), the cultural construction of knowledge-producing industries and the relations between technology, the body and social-environmental relations (Bronwyn Parry and Simon Reid-Henry), shows how new geographies of power and identity are made through material practices, the making of places and the construction of connections. Working through The City Centre, research also enhances understanding of material culture and everyday life in Victorian cities (Alastair Owens) and of the politics of different visions of the city through studies of utopian urbanism and planning practices since the Eighteenth-Century (Miles Ogborn and David Pinder). By examining groups ranging from settlement workers to the situationists and surrealists, as well as artists and cultural practitioners, our research also advances debates about urban spatial politics and performance (Alison Blunt and David Pinder).