Kelsey Monteith

Gypsy-Traveller Domicide: exploring the notion, making, and unmaking of Gypsy-Traveller homes 

Kelsey is a DPhil student who works with nomadic peoples, specifically Gypsies and Travellers in the United Kingdom - a misunderstood, marginalised, and misrepresented ethnic minority group. Her research draws together cultural, legal, and political geographies to explore Gypsy-Traveller understandings of place, landscape, and home, attending especially to the cultural importance of movement and horses-related practices and events within processes of home making. Building on this, her research aims to understand how Gypsy-Traveller homes are being threatened, unmade, and destroyed by societal, legal, and political persecution, and the implication that this is having on Gypsy-Traveller places, homes, culture, and present and future lives. She also engages with animal geographies, including owning and working alongside her own horse - Maverick - who is part of her research process, and resides in Oxford with her. 

She previously completed her BA in Geography and MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance at the Oxford School of Geography and the Environment. For her undergraduate dissertation, she was awarded the internal A.J Herbertson Prize for “the best Human Geography Dissertation in FHS Geography 2023” alongside the external Royal Geographic Society (with IBG) Alfred Steers Dissertation Prize for “the best undergraduate dissertation in a UK geography department.” She welcomes communication from anyone interested in her work, or with shared interests.