Staff profile

Biography and Research Interests

Robin is a lecturer in human geography with interests that span social, cultural, urban, and political geographies. His research is broadly concerned with the complexities and intersections of lived diversity, social inequalities and place and has four core strands:

(1) Diaspora and its intersections with the urban

(2) Migration, asylum, and refuge.

(3) Everyday urban multiculture, racism, and Islamophobia.

(4) Geographies of marginalised youth. .

Robin is currently working on two projects about the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees. He is Co-I on an ESRC funded project that is examining the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on asylum seekers and refugees, and he is the lead postdoc researcher on the project ‘Refugee youth and Public Space’, which is funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA). This project is researching the personal urban geographies of young refugees and asylum seekers in four European cities, mapping their migration histories, exploring their post-arrival experiences, and asking how their place-making and artistic practices contribute to the transformation of urban public space.

Robin completed his PhD in early 2016, which was an examination of Moroccan diaspora formations in the city of Granada in southern Spain. He has worked as a researcher at LSE Cities on the ‘Super-diverse streets: Economies and spaces of urban migration in UK Cities’ project and as the lead researcher on the projects ‘Muslim Youth and Political Participation in Scotland’ and ‘Young People, Diversity and Belonging in a Brexit-Age’ at Newcastle University. He also has government and policy research experience, working as a quantitative researcher at the Migration and Borders Analysis team at the Home Office in London.

Edited book

• de Backer, M. Hopkins, P., van Liempt, I., Finlay, R., Kirndörfer, E. Kox, M., Benwell, M. & Hörschelmann, K. (2023). Refugee youth: migration, justice and public space. Bristol University Press.

Journal Article

• De Backer, Mattias, Felten, Pascale, Kirndörfer, Elisabeth, Kox, Mieke & Finlay, Robin (2022). ‘Their lives are even more on hold now’ migrants’ experiences of waiting and immobility during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social & Cultural Geography 1.
• Finlay, Robin (2022). Entangled histories of place and reconfigurations of diasporic home: Al‐Andalus history and the Moroccan diaspora in Granada, Spain. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47(3): 604-617.
• Finlay, Robin & Hopkins, Peter (2020). Resistance and marginalisation: Islamophobia and the political participation of young Muslims in Scotland. Social & Cultural Geography 21(4): 546.
• Finlay, Robin & Hopkins, Peter (2019). Young Muslim women's political participation in Scotland: Exploring the intersections of gender, religion, class and place. Political Geography 74: 102046.
• Finlay, Robin, Nayak, Anoop, Benwell, Matthew C, Pande, Raksha & Richardson, Michael (2019). Race, place and young people in the age of Brexit. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1): 17.
• Finlay, Robin (2019). A diasporic right to the city: the production of a Moroccan diaspora space in Granada, Spain. Social & Cultural Geography 20(6): 785.
• Hall, Suzanne, King, Julia & Finlay, Robin (2017). Migrant infrastructure: Transaction economies in Birmingham and Leicester, UK. Urban Studies 54(6): 1311.
• Hall, S., King, J. & Finlay, R. (2015). Envisioning migration: drawing the infrastructure of Stapleton Road, Bristol. New Diversities 17(2): 59-72.