Fiona McConnell is Associate Professor in Human Geography and Tutorial Fellow at St Catherine's College. She joined the School of Geography and the Environment in December 2013. Prior to this she was a lecturer in human geography at Newcastle University and has also held a Junior Research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge (2011-2013) and an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship at Newcastle University (2010-2011). Fiona has a BA in Geography from the University of Cambridge (Fitzwilliam College) and PhD from Queen Mary, University of London.
As a political geographer Fiona's research aims to develop new areas of thinking regarding governance beyond the state, how political legitimacy is articulated by marginalised communities, and changing practices of diplomacy and mediation. Fiona was awarded the Stanley D. Brunn Young Scholar Award by the Political Geography Specialty Group of the AAG in 2013 and held a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship in 2017. She is an Associate Editor at Political Geography, and serves on the editorial boards of European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, Geopolitics, The Geographical Journal and Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. Fiona also sits on the Board of Directors of the Tibet Justice Center, an independent volunteer committee of lawyers and scholars which advocates for human rights and self-determination for Tibetans.
Driving much of Fiona's research has been an interest in how communities officially excluded from formal state politics are nevertheless engaging with aspects of statecraft, and in using such seemingly anomalous cases as a lens to critically examine the 'norms' of governance. Her doctoral and post-doctoral research focused on the political institutions and practices of the exile Tibetan government based in India, an institution which engages in state-like functions despite being legally unrecognised and lacking jurisdiction over territory. Fiona's monograph Rehearsing the state: the political practices of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (Wiley 2016) draws on this research on exile Tibetan politics to consider the rehearsal of statecraft. Fiona has an ongoing interest in how political legitimacy is claimed, constructed and contested, particularly in the so-called margins of geopolitics, and in practices of peace, diplomacy and mediation.
i. Practices and pedagogy of diplomacy in the margins
Fiona is interested in changing geographies and practices of diplomacy, with a particular focus on the diplomatic role of non-state actors. She has undertaken research on the diplomatic practices of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), a membership organisation of political communities not adequately represented at major international fora. This research has been funded by an RGS-IBG Small Research Grant, a John Fell Fund small award and a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship . As part of this fellowship, and with additional funding from the Ray Y Gildea Jr Award (RGS-IBG) Fiona is producing Model UNPO teaching materials.
From July 2015 - September 2017 Fiona coordinated a programme of knowledge exchange activities titled 'Training of diplomats from unrepresented nations: capacity building for effective UN lobbying'. This programme was run in conjunction with the UNPO and the Tibet Justice Center and was funded by the University of Oxford's ESRC Impact Acceleration Account. The team has published a training pack on UN advocacy and a report on reprisals at the UN.
She was also Co-Investigator with Jason Dittmer (UCL) on an AHRC funded research network on 'translating diplomatic cultures'. An edited volume from this network was published in 2016.
ii. Geographies of mediation
Working with Nick Megoran (Newcastle) and Philippa Williams (QMUL), Fiona has been developing a research agenda around geographies of peace. Their focus is on contextualised and contingent practices of peace, and their work seeks to critically unpack the nature of everyday peaceful existence and ask who peace is for.
Extending this work to issues of mediation, Fiona is PI on the ESRC GCRF funded project 'Gobi Framework for sustainable infrastructure development: scaling up praxis from Mongolia to Central Asia', working alongside Troy Sternberg and Ariell Ahearn at Oxford. The 30 month project is a collaboration with Independent Research Institute of Mongolia (IRIM) and the University of Central Asia that seeks to develop a framework for sustainable infrastructure development to promote inclusive and environmentally sensitive socio-economic development in the context of Chinese mega infrastructure initiatives in Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
iii. Geographies of marginality in Asia
This research focuses on the spaces and practices through which minority groups negotiate their relationship with the state and the ways in which marginality might be conceived as a site of political mobilisation. There are two strands to this research. First, against a background of jobless growth in India Fiona has undertaken collaborative research with Al James (Newcastle), Bhaskar Vira (Cambridge) and Philippa Williams (QMUL) which examines the extent to which India's new service economy is 'socially inclusive' for graduates from marginalised communities. Second, she co-edited a special issue of Contemporary South Asia with Vasudha Chhotray (UEA) on 'Certifications of citizenship: the history, politics and materiality of identity documents in South Asia'.
Fiona runs a Final Honour School option course 'Geopolitics in the Margins' and convenes and teaches on the FHS course 'Space, Place and Society'. She also lectures on the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance course.
At St Catherine's College, Fiona and her colleagues are responsible for teaching students across the entire breadth of geographical topics for the Preliminary Examination and Final Honour School of Geography.
Fiona welcomes enquiries from individuals wishing to undertake doctoral or post-doctoral research in the following broadly defined areas: contested sovereignties; practices and pedagogies of diplomacy; peace and non-violence; the Tibetan diaspora; marginality and liminality.
Current Graduate Research Students
| Serkan Birgel | Peacebuilding through natural resources - the case of Cyprus |
| Tarek Kheir Eddine | The impact of confessional politics and socio-economic stratification on the use and development of public spaces in Lebanon |
| Shona Loong | At the margins of a ‘development darling’: intersections between sovereignty, territory, and development in Karen State, Myanmar |
| Janak Padhiar | Towards understanding life course geographies of young Afghans in India |
| Liam Saddington | Sea level rise in Kiribati and Tuvalu: Geopolitics, epistemic communities and diplomacy |
| Alice Watson | "And now on Radio 4…..": imaginative geographies of migration on the airwaves |
Recent Graduate Research Students (since 2006)
Saher Hasnain
Completed DPhil in 2017 | Food environments in Islamabad, Pakistan |
Viresh Patel
Completed DPhil in 2017 | Changing contours of sociality: Youth, education, and general relations in rural Gujarat, India |
