Staff profile

Academic Employment:

October 2013 -
Senior Lecturer in Human Geography
Department of Geography, Durham University

September 2005 - September 2013
Lecturer in Human Geography
Department of Geography, Durham University

September 2002 - September 2005
Lecturer in Human Geography,
Department of Geography, University of Liverpool

PhD (2003) and MA (1999)
Department of Geography, University of Sheffield

Research Interests

1) Geographies of 'the body'
My interest in 'the body' is grounded in a commitment to theorising and researching the specificities of female embodied and emotional experiences. My work draws upon feminist theories of 'the body' including the work of, Elisabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Mariam Fraser, Moria Gatens and Elspeth Probyn. My doctoral work utilised the context of clothing consumption for eliciting the multiplicities of female embodied experience as produced through clothing and focused on the modalities of bodies that are engaged in slimming practices, that are sized, that are zoned and that look at their own and other bodies. This work has led to an interrogation of the concept of 'body image' and an exploration of the means through which women 'manage' their emotions when developing relationships with their bodies.

I am also interested in exploring the potential of this feminist work on the body for contributing to non-representational work in human geography. This involves using 'sexual difference' theory in order to make space for a 'sexed' and differentiated subject within such work.

2) Fat Bodies and Critical Approaches to Obesity
I situate my interest in obesity within recent critical interventions (Gard and Wright 2004; Le Besco 2004) which acknowledge the problematic and discriminatory practices of measuring (for example through the Body Mass Index) and moralising about fat bodies. Instead I am interested in uncovering the very nature of fat subjectivities through the narratives and practices of self-defined fat men and women, for example through the size acceptance movement in the UK and USA and through a theoretical interrogation of what constitutes bodily matter or ‘flab’.I am currently conducting a project on size friendly on-line and real life spaces in a British context. I also contextualise this interest within recent public health debates in Britain concerning children's health and childhood obesity. I have carried out research which considered the ways through which supermarkets place responsibility for children’s healthy eating through the production of children's healthy food ranges and in store health education initiatives. I have also been involved in two projects which developed a critical account of children's experiences of being weighed and measured as part of the British govenments Body Mass Index (BMI) surveillance programme involving reception (aged five) and year six (aged 10-11) students.

• geographies of 'the body', feminist theories of embodiment, emotions, obesity, consumption, clothing

Chapter in book

• Nieuwenhuis, M., & Colls, R. (2025). Geographies of Bodies. In B. Warf (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Human Geography (1-6). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25900-5
• Colls, R. (2012). Intra-body touching and the over-life sized paintings of Jenny Saville. In M. Paterson, & M. Dodge (Eds.), Touching Space, Placing Touch. Ashgate Publishing
• Evans, B., & Colls, R. (2010). ‘Doing more good than harm’? The absent presence of children’s bodies in (anti)obesity policy'. In L. Monaghan, E. Rich, & L. Aphramor (Eds.), The Obesity Debate. Palgrave

Edited book

• Monaghan, L., Colls, R., & Evans, B. (Eds.). (2014). Obesity Discourse and Fat Politics: Research, Critique and Interventions. Routledge
• Hörschelmann, K., & Colls, R. (Eds.). (2009). Contested Bodies of Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan

Journal Article

• Evans, B., Colls, R., & Bias, S. (2024). 'Getting in and going': Access to onboard toilets for fat and disabled people on commercial aircraft. Geoforum, 148, Article 103908. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103908
• Colls, R., Evans, B., & Bias, S. (2021). The Dys-appearing Fat Body: Bodily Intensities and Fatphobic Sociomaterialities when Flying Whilst Fat. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 111(6), https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1866485
• Burke, S., Carr, A., Casson, H., Coddington, K., Colls, R., Jollans, A., Jordan, S., Smith, K., Taylor, N., & Urquhart, H. (2017). Generative Spaces: Intimacy, Activism and Teaching Feminist Geographies. Gender, Place and Culture, 24(5), 661-673. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369x.2017.1335293
• Colls, R., & Evans, B. (2014). Making space for fat bodies?: A critical account of ‘the obesogenic environment’. Progress in Human Geography, 38(6), 733-753. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132513500373
• Colls, R., & Fannin, M. (2013). Placental surfaces and the geographies of bodily interiors. Environment and Planning A, 45, 1187-1104. https://doi.org/10.1068/a44698
• Andrews, G. J., Hall, E., Evans, B., & Colls, R. (2012). Moving beyond walkability: On the potential of health geography. Social Science & Medicine, 75(11), 1925-1932. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.08.013
• Colls, R. (2012). Feminism, bodily difference and non-representational geographies. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(3), 430-445. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00477.x
• Colls, R. (2012). 'Big Girls Having Fun': Reflections on a fat accepting space. Somatechnics, 2(1), 18-37
• Colls, R. (2012). BodiesTouchingBodies: Jenny Saville’s over-life sized paintings and the ’morpho-logics’ of fat, female bodies. Gender, Place and Culture, 19(2), 175-192
• Evans, B., Colls, R., & Horschelmann, K. (2011). 'Change4Life for your kids': embodied collectives and public health pedagogy. Sport, Education and Society, 16(3), 323-341. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2011.565964
• Colls, R., & Evans, B. (2010). Challenging Assumptions: Re-thinking the obesity 'problem'. Geography, 95(2), 99-105
• Evans, B., & Colls, R. (2009). Measuring Fatness, Governing Bodies: The Spatialities of the Body Mass Index(BMI) in Anti-Obesity Politics. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 41(5), 1051-1083. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00706.x
• Colls, R., & Evans, B. (2009). Critical Geographies of Fat/Bigness/Corpulence. Introduction: Questioning Obesity Politics. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 41(5), 1011-1020. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00705.x
• Colls, R., & Hörschelmann, K. (2009). The geographies of children's and young people's bodies. Children's Geographies, 7(1), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733280802630882
• Colls, R. (2007). Materialising bodily matter: Intra-action and the embodiment of 'Fat'. Geoforum, 38(2), 353-365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2006.09.004
• Colls, R., & Evans, B. (2007). Embodying responsibility: children's health and supermarket initiatives. Environment and Planning A, 40(3), 615-631. https://doi.org/10.1068/a3935
• Colls, R. (2006). Outsize/Outside: Bodily bignesses and the emotional experiences of British women shopping for clothes. Gender, Place and Culture, 13(5), 529-545. https://doi.org/10.1080/09663690600858945
• Colls, R. (2004). 'Looking alright, feeling alright': emotions, sizing and the geographies of women's experiences of clothing consumption. Social and Cultural Geography, 5(4), 583-596. https://doi.org/10.1080/1464936042000317712

Report

• Shucksmith, J., Colls, R., McNaughton, R., Ells, L., & Wilkinson, J. (2007). A pilot study to examine school-based aspects of the BMI surveillance programme in NE England. NEPHO
• Colls, R., Featherstone, D., O’Brien, M., & Sadler, D. (2005). Transformations: changing careers, meanings and experiences of women’s political activism. A report commissioned from The University of Liverpool by UNISON North West. [No known commissioning body]