What we do

Research in the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics (SECP) engages some of the most urgent and pressing global challenges involving the environment, politics and society today.

Our researchers explore ways these are governed, represented and experienced within local, national, international and everyday cultural contexts. Working within and across disciplines, this spans the politics of environment, race, nationality, gender, culture, ethnicity, North-South and East-West divides – including how they are spatially shaped and imagined, ideologically inspired or limited, and diversely lived and experienced. 

Find out how to join us as a member, collaborator, student or visitor.

Our academic themes at the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics

Our work challenges and subverts power relations through theoretical, creative and practical insights in order to provide alternative modes of living and being that are more environmentally, ethically, and socially just. 

Addressing these requires inter and transdisciplinary research and collaboration to advance critical understanding for real-world application. We are committed to decolonial practices and anti-racist politics, and an ethos of collaboration, collegiality, and participation in the development and practice of our research and partnerships.

Working within and across the social and natural sciences and arts and humanities, our research cuts across a range of approaches to environment, space, culture and politics, which we see as interrelated and by no means distinctive. These are:

 

Climate justice and environmental politics

Our research addresses the complex and intersecting socio-cultural, political, scientific and historical dimensions of the climate crisis and environmental change, within and across global north and global south divides. Through transdisciplinary methods and creative and participatory approaches, we situate questions of culture, power, knowledge, inequality and justice.

Through democratic practices, we collaborate with non-academic partners and communities to co-develop new ways of understanding and living that centre an ethics of care and wellbeing for ecologically sustainable and just futures. These ways of working are undertaken in contexts such as land, water and extractivism, social movements, climate and environmental justice activism, climate communications and education, human and more than human relations, the politics of conservation and biodiversity, food justice, climate migration, and prefiguring environmental futures. 

Where we work:

We conduct research with partners (not exclusively) in Southern Africa, Indonesia, Brazil, Austria, Germany, UK, USA, Belgium, France, Australia.

Achievements in this area include:

Contact centresecp@brighton.ac.uk or see our Join us for study, work or visit pages for more information on collaborating with us on our research into environmental and climate change  to find including study for a PhD in climate and environmental research.

 

Front cover of Professor Julie Doyle's book Mediating Climate Change shows a researcher in a polar region pointing to a snowy version of the mountainous background of the landscape

Professor Julie Doyle's seminal work Mediating Climate Change (2011) is a platform upon which the centre's wide-reaching environmental communications research has developed.

Migration and mobilities 

The Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics encompasses research into refugee and other types of migration and mobility within and across North-South and European divides, in war, conflict, post-conflict, and postcolonial societies, with people affected by forced migration and displacement, including resettled refugees, undocumented migrants, and asylum seekers.

Our members work at all career levels, and their research links with the Centre’s other themes via interests on migration and mobility that are developed through a strong cross-cutting focus on climate justice, spatial formations of power, decolonial practices and anti-racist politics, imperial filiations in contemporary migration, interdisciplinary collaborations, and non-academic partnerships. 

Where we work: 
We conduct research with partners (not exclusively) in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Singapore, France, Germany, Spain, Colombia, Bolivia, Sweden, Kosovo, Greece, Iran, and England. 

Achievements in this area include:

 

Contact centresecp@brighton.ac.uk or see our Join us for study, work or visit pages for more information on collaborating with us on our research into human migration including studying for a PhD around the subject of human migration.

Front cover of Nichola Khan's research monograph Arc of the Journeyman. Designed cover with windscreen wiper and taxi rank feature gives subtitle Afghan migrants in England. 

Forty years of continuous war and conflict have made Afghans the largest refugee group in the world. In this first full-scale ethnography of Afghan migrants in England, Dr Nichola Khan examined the imprint of violence, displacement, kinship obligations, and mobility on the lives and work of Pashtun journeyman taxi drivers in Britain.

Spatial inequalities and injustices 

Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics researchers address aspects of power and inequality through space, using methodologies and theories from geography, the social sciences, the physical sciences, the arts, media and communication studies, and humanities, as well as developing innovative new interdisciplinary methods and spatial practices. Our work seeks to describe the spatial dimensions of social and ecological challenges in specific places, and offer insights to address spatial injustices, understanding spatial justice as going beyond a legal framework to encompass rights, participation and access.

Our research in this area has included publications and projects on spatial injustice, spatial inequalities, space and rights, performative spaces, spatial justice in urban planning and architecture, space and race, disruptive spaces, memorialising spaces, epidemiological space and race in COVID-19, glocal, global and local approaches, and spatial politics, ethnicity and heritage, access to nature, contested spaces, place-making, gentrification and displacement, wellbeing, green spaces, and how the non-human and human interact in space. 

Where we work:

We conduct research with partners (not exclusively) in: uk, southern Africa, Germany, Tunisia, China, Cuba, Togo, Uruguay, holland, Norway, Spain and Slovenia 

Achievements in this area include: 

 

Contact centresecp@brighton.ac.uk or see our Join us for study, work or visit pages for more information on collaborating with us on our research into spatial inequalities and injustices including study for a PhD on any disciplinary approach concerning the politics of power and inequality through place.

 

Cover of Dan Burdsey's monograph study, Race, Place and the Seaside: Postcards from the Edge. Image shows end of short wooden pier with a low sun over the horizon line of the sea.

Dr Dan Burdsey's book is the first academic monograph to focus exclusively on issues of race, ethnicity, whiteness and multiculture at the English seaside. It calls for acknowledgement of the racialised nature of this environment, and proposes that its distinctive spaces, places, traditions and narratives should be included within broader analyses of race in contemporary Britain.

Our research and knowledge exchange impact

The Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics seeks to transform people’s lives and spaces through creating sustainable and socially just societies and economies. We work with a wide range of partners including government and local authorities and services, local and international businesses and industries, communities, NGOs and arts organisations.

As our researchers work within and across a range of disciplines from social and natural sciences, and arts and humanities, our research partners reflect this diversity and multi-disciplinary impact. Some of our local and national external research partners include Brighton and Hove City Council (UK), Climate Outreach (UK Charity), Football Foundation (UK Charity) and ONCA Centre for Arts and Ecology (UK Charity). Our international external research partners include the Environment Agency Austria (Germany).

Our members have initiated and taken lead roles in wide-reaching, impactful projects including:

Football4Peace...Rugby4Peace: how sport is bringing intercultural cooperation to communities in conflict

Football4Peace...Rugby4Peace: how sport is bringing intercultural cooperation to communities in conflict

Politics and arts: how media and visual communication can bring about social and political change

Politics and arts: how media and visual communication can bring about social and political change

Urban agriculture research: increasing food production for city sustainability

Urban agriculture research: increasing food production for city sustainability

 

Our research and enterprise output

Research undertaken by the centre members is innovative, multi-disciplinary, and often collaborative, with clear social and economic impact.

Details of research publications and other outputs fostered by the centre and achieved by its members, along with funded projects delivered by the centre, can be accessed on the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics' database of research.

Visit our institutional record of publications and projects