Dr Alex Manby

Alex is a Departmental Lecture in Human Geography associated with Mansfield College. Alex is a political and historical geographer who engages with South Asian studies. Alex's research concerns how subaltern, minority, and Indigenous communities have engaged in practices of internationalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Alex's ESRC-funded DPhil employed multi-sited archival, interview, and digital methodologies to write a political and historical geography of Naga intellectual thought from 1946 to 2022. Since 2020, Alex has also been working with Professor Fiona McConnell on the spatialities of digital diplomacy at the United Nation's Human Rights Council, funded by Professor McConnell's Phillip Leverhulme Prize.

Alex studied for a DPhil in Geography at SoGE and holds an MSc with distinction in Geopolitics and Security from Royal Holloway, University of London, where he was ranked top student in his cohort, and was awarded the department prize for best thesis. Prior to his MSc, Alex completed a BA degree in Geography from the University of Oxford and was awarded the proxime accessit Gibbs Prize for outstanding performance in FHS examinations.

Before studying for his DPhil, Alex worked in education research and policy at The Behavioural Insights Team (a social purpose company part owned by HMG Cabinet Office). Alex has also worked in widening participation and access, delivering programmes to raise aspiration and attainment among students in East London.

Alex teaches human geography at Mansfield College and gives lectures on political geography topics for undergraduate students at SoGE. Alex was previously a college tutor at St Catherine's College, where he delivered a range of classes, tutorials, and dissertation supervision across the undergraduate course. He has also been a tutor on the 'Geopolitics in the Margins' and 'Geographies of Childhood and Youth in the Global South' options and has delivered classes for SOGE students on archival methods and fieldwork design.

• Manby, A. (2025) Archiving and the aspirational politics of self-determination: Non-state claims to legitimacy amongst the Nagas in Northeast India. Journal of Historical Geography. 
• Manby, A. and McConnell, F. (2024) Digital geographies of diplomacy: The uneven digital mediation of spaces and encouters at the UN Human Rights Council. Political Geography, 113: 103147.
• McConnell, F., and Manby, A. (2024) Digital Diplomacy of Non-Governmental Digital diplomacy and non-governmental and transnational organisations. In Bjola, C. and Manor, I. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Digital Diplomacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Loong, S., Manby, A., and McConnell, F. (2023) Rethinking self-determination: colonial and relational geographies in Asia. Territory, Politics, Governance.
• McConnell, F., Manby, A., Monje Cano, M., and Bunche, R. (2020) Compromised Space and Undiplomatic Immunity. UNPO.