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University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

Esther Rootham

Academic Profile

In January 2012, Esther finished her DPhil entitled (Re)Working Citizenship: Young People and Colour-Blind Politics at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Esther holds an Honours BSc from the University of Toronto, Canada in Environmental Science and International Development Studies and a Master's from York University in Toronto, Canada in Geography.

Esther's research interests include anti-racist and feminist theory and methods, the connections between economic restructuring and the production of gender, race and class and other social boundaries, embodiment, memory, landscape, and the political geographies of everyday lived experience.

Esther's doctoral research centred on a set of key themes relating to antiracist politics, young people, racialisation processes and work in contemporary France. It considered the politics of 'race' and the representation of cultural difference at the level of political and academic elite discourses, monumental landscapes as well as through the everyday lived experience of young people. It included an examination of the public controversy and political debate as to the value of 'race' and ethnicity quantitative data in identifying discrimination and examined arguments about the performativity of categorisation. Esther also used visual interpretive methodologies to consider recent re-imaginings of the French republic embodied in the Cité national de l' histoire de l'immigration (National Museum of Immigration) that has as its mission the valorization of the contribution of immigrants to the construction of the nation. The exploration of the representation of cultural difference over the past thirty years in the census and in the museum, key instruments of nation building contributed to the interpretation of the narratives of the lived experience of racialised young people as they navigate their early schooling and working lives.

Current Research

Esther is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Linda McDowell as part of the Oxford Diaspora Program.

The study focuses on the experience of youth unemployment, the rise of right-wing politics and the construction of masculinities amongst young men in the United Kingdom. The study considers how the contemporary context of economic insecurity and youth mobilisation is affecting the lives of working class young men. Racist right-wing discourses are quick to suggest that young people's employment prospects are under threat due to immigration into the UK. Based on interviews with out of work white working class and racialised migrant young men from different diaspora communities, the study will apply an intersectional lens to explore how they construct a sense of themselves as masculine in the context of worklessness and how they allocate blame for their unemployment.

Teaching

Esther will hold a temporary Lectureship position at St John's College, Oxford, in Geography for Trinity Term of 2012. She has also had teaching responsibilities in the Geography Departments of the University of Toronto and York University, Toronto.