Austin Read

Austin is a Departmental Lecturer specialising in environmental geography. He teaches at undergraduate and master's levels. 

Austin is an environmental geographer whose research examines how ecologies, particularly watery environments in Britain, have been shaped and transformed by colonial histories and political economies. His recently concluded PhD research drew on ethnographic and archival methods to explore how salmon decline in the rivers Severn and Wye, which is often framed as a novel and local crisis, is in fact the result of British imperial histories that stretch back centuries and reach across the world. His new research project seeks to expand this work into the submerged colonial histories of rivers by building a comparative study of the shared histories and connected flows of metropolitan and colonial rivers of the former British Empire. 

Austin has a BSc (first class) in Geography with Study in Continental Europe and an MSc in Human Geography: Society and Space, both from the University of Bristol. He is awaiting his viva voce to complete his DPhil in Human Geography, also from the University of Bristol.