Politics-State-Space

The Politics-State-Space research cluster reflects cutting-edge and diverse work carried out at the department in political geography and geopolitics. It aims to foster new critical engagements with the inquiry of the political, its practices and conceptual horizons.

At the core of PSS lays a shared commitment to understanding how various geographies give form to the political. Our work is inspired by the political urgencies of the present, while seeking broader historical contexts and conceptual links. Specifically, our research engages with the broad geographic questions concerning the changing nature of sovereignty, territory, citizenship while seeking to challenge existing analytical paradigms, illuminate alternative conceptual frameworks and draw links to diverse engagements with the political within and beyond the discipline. As a cluster, we draw inspiration from political practice at different registers, by a broad set of actors and at more or less obvious spaces, from the archives of war and asylum activism, to the political ontology of ice, and to Indigenous territorial claims. Equally, our work interrogates the mediums of political representation, from algorithmic data and to embodied and literary forms.

The work of the cluster is centred on three sets of related activities: international workshops, departmental seminars and a series of research-enhancing activities, including reading groups, semi-structured research conversations, and social events.