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School of Geography and the Environment

University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

Professor Sarah Whatmore

Academic Profile

Sarah is a graduate of University College London where she gained a BA (Geography) in 1981; an M.Phil. (Town Planning) in 1983 and, after a stint working for the Greater London Council, a PhD (Geography) in 1988. She spent 12 years teaching in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol, where she was promoted to a Chair in Human Geography in 1999 and awarded a DSc for published research in 2000. She moved to the Geography Discipline at the Open University in September 2001 as Professor of Environmental Geography. Sarah has also held visiting appointments in several institutions overseas including the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA); the University of Newcastle, (Australia); and the University of Trondheim (Norway).

A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) for nearly 20 years, Sarah was elected to the Council of the RGS/IBG and to membership of the Research Committee in June 2004 for 3 years. She is also an elected member of the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences and a Fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). She is currently an editor of Environment and Planning, A (Pion) and of the Blackwell Dictionary of Human Geography (5th edition), and serves on the editorial boards of several journals.

Her research focuses on relations between people and the material world, particularly the living world, and the spatial habits of thought that inform the ways in which these relations are imagined and practiced in the conduct of science, governance and everyday life. She has published widely on the theoretical and political implications of these questions in two main directions.

First, developing 'more-than-human' modes of enquiry that address (i) the material and ecological fabric of social life and (ii) the politics of knowledge through which this fabric is contested and re-made. These concerns are informed by an interest in a range of philosophical resources (e.g. the creative tensions between bio-philosophy and feminist theories of the bodily) and experiments in transdisciplinary research practice that work against prevailing divisions between natural and social science, 'expert' and 'lay' knowledge (notably those associated with new fields like Science and Technology studies and with disciplines that pre-date these divisions like geography, anthropology and archaeology).

Second, interrogating the relationship between science and democracy particularly in terms of (i) environmental knowledge controversies and geo-political technologies of risk management (eg flood risk modelling / mapping; regulating the movement of GM plant materials); and (ii) collaborative research practices which bring the different knowledge competences of social and natural scientists into play with those of diverse publics engaged in common matters of environmental concern. Current projects include work with hydrological modellers on the science and politics of flood risk management (RELU programme - ESRC/NERC/BBSRC); with sociologists and political scientists on sustainable consumption (ANR, France); and with conservation biologists on the commercialisation of wildlife (ESRC).

These themes are brought together in her most recent books - The Stuff of Politics: technoscience, democracy and public life 2008 (in press) (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis) (co-edited with Braun); Hybrid Geographies: natures cultures spaces, 2002 (Sage, London); Using social theory: thinking through research, 2003 (Sage, London) (co-edited with Pryke and Rose); and Cultural geography: critical concepts, 2004 (two volumes) (Routledge, London) (co-edited with Thrift).

She was recipient of the Cuthbert Peek award from the RGS/IBG in 2003 for 'innovative contributions to the understanding of nature-society relations' and her research has been supported by a variety of funding bodies including Research Councils, NGOs and Government agencies, such as the Economic and Social Research Council; the Worldwide Fund for Nature and English Nature.

Current Research

  1. leading a 36 month interdisciplinary research project on Environmental knowledge controversies: science, democracy and expertise looking at the socio-political articulations of flood risk modelling (2007-2009). She is working with Prof. Stuart Lane at the University of Durham and Prof. Neil Ward at the University of Newcastle. The project is part of the Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) Programme funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). more...
  2. Undertaking (with Dr Jamie Lorimer) a 16 month research project funded by the ESRC on Scientific ecotourism and (post)colonial encounters with wildlife. The project seeks to establish how far, and in what ways, contemporary scientific ecotourism articulates a distinctively post-colonial mode of environmental ethics and governance. more...
  3. organising (with Bruce Braun, University of Minnesota) a residential workshop that brings together leading international scholars in political theory and science and technology studies on The stuff of politics: technoscience, democracy and public life, 7-10 December 2006, University of Oxford.
  4. collaborating in an interdisciplinary research project on Sustainable consumption: social contestation and consumer action with French and Belgian research teams. Funded under the ADD programme of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, France. Oct. 2005 - Sept. 2008.
  5. co-organising a seminar series on Locating technoscience: geographies of science, technology and politics with colleagues at UCL, Cambridge & Sussex, funded by an ESRC seminar series award, Jan. 2006 - Dec. 2007.
  6. leading an ESRC project (with Steve Hinchliffe) on Habitable cities: civic spaces and ecological practices, graded 'outstanding' in end of award review. 2002-2003.
  7. researching a long-term project on the ontological politics of evidence, looking at the ways in which the material world enters into the fabric of scientific and legal claims and practices for a book entitled Eloquent materials: the witness of matter in science and law with Oxford University Press.

Teaching

Current graduate students include:
  • Sebastian Abrahamsson
    Invasive science and inventive arts: Towards a cartography of bodily inner spaces.
  • Maan Barua
    The political ecology of Human-Elephant conflict in India
  • Zoë Enstone
    The Globalization of (Un)Popular Culture.
  • Joe Gerlach
    Vernacular mappings: affect, virtuality, performance.
  • Thomas Jellis
    Spaces of aesthetic experiment
  • Anders Munk
    Environmental knowledge controversies: flood risk mapping, insurance zoning and the politics of rural property.
  • Jyotiraj Patra
    Innovation and Participation: Techno-institutional dynamics of mangrove resource conservation in the Bhitarkanika social-ecological system, Orissa, India.
D.Phil. students successfully completing since 2001:
  • Pamela Richardson-Ngwenya (2009)
    Caribbean sugar networks: Ethical relations and heterogeneous bodies.
  • Susannah Sallu (2007)
    Biodiversity dynamics, knowledges and livelihoods in Kalahari dryland biomes.

Selected Publications