Linked by the overarching themes of social justice and the politics of development, research in this area explores development in both urban and rural environments in a range of national and international contexts – including the Indian sub-continent, Latin America and closer to home in Europe.
Rowan Ellis’s ongoing research in India explores the politics of development against the paradox of new international flows of investment, the growth of the Indian middle class, and the persistence of urban inequality.
David Watts has an interest in the governance of food and rural areas. He is working, with Norval Strachan (Biological Sciences), Colin Hunter and others on gastro-intestinal pathogen risk governance in food chains and rural areas as part of an inter-disciplinary catalyst project funded by the Environmental & Social Ecology of Human Infectious Diseases programme (MRC/NERC/ESRC/BBSRC). He has also worked on Government and ESRC funded research into rural policy and agricultural restructuring.
Antonio Ioris and Sergei Shubin are conducting research in the Greater Glasgow area about environmental justice and social exclusion related to processes of urban growth, political representation and environmental degradation.
Antonio Ioris has conducted extensive work on the reform of environmental regulation in Europe and in Latin America, investigating institutional constraints, old and new forms of conflict and the impact of neoliberal development policies on environmental conservation and social inequality.
Neil Smith’s recent book Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space explores the ways the capitalist production of nature has considerably transformed the social relationship with the natural world, and in so doing has created new geographies of uneven development. Other recent work by Neil Smith theorizes the potential of various social movements that have emerged to challenge neoliberal globalization and uneven development.
Lorna Philip’s interests in demographic ageing in rural communities are illustrated in her recent collaboration in research addressing the challenges of delivering health and social care services to an ageing, remote rural population. This work is being taken forward in the TOPS project, funded through the dot.rural hub, which will investigate the role of new technologies to support independent living at home for the older, rural population experiencing chronic pain.
Mark Reed’s research involves stakeholder engagement with environmental management. He has worked on a RELU funded project ‘Managing environmental change at the rural-urban fringe’ and is undertaking work funded by the British Academy to explore what makes stakeholder participation in environmental management work.
PhD Students
Ruth Wilson (Wallace and Farrington)
Rob Craig (Nelson)