Geographies of Life

The boundaries of life and non-life, and human and non-human life, are at stake across a range of contemporary scientific, social, economic and political transformations. Examples include responses to the Anthropocene and new ways of governing through nature, how to live with difference in the midst of the eruption of new racisms and gender inequalities, debates about how to foster wellbeing and reduce vulnerabilities, and transformations in medical and healthcare techniques and practices.

The Geographies of Life research cluster works across the breadth of these concerns, examining and theorising how substantive geographies of life, living and liveliness are produced and experienced in ways that create hierarchies and inequalities, harms and potentials. Research moves between the intimacies and endurances of embodied life and the abstractions of in/trans/post-human processes. The cluster explores the spatial and temporal contexts (archaeologies, geologies, histories) of life in ways that go beyond a liberal 'humanistic' account of Life as singular and universal. Here the signifier 'life' connects together expertise of current and newly-arriving academic staff, researchers and postgraduates.

We invite current research, teaching and academic staff, postgraduates, and colleagues elsewhere to propose ideas for collaboration, workshops, and symposia. Our research themes include:

1. Production and experience of life (and death) in the Anthropocene
2. Life and the geographies of wellbeing
3. Life, living and the contemporary politics of difference
4. Materialities, digitalities and life
5. Researching, understanding and presenting the geographies and histories of life and living