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 interdisciplinary research and collaboration to advance critical understanding for real-world application. As such, we are committed to an ethos of collaboration, collegiality, and participation in the development and practice of our research and partnerships.

Combining theoretical and practical innovations, 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 include:

Environmental politics and climate change  

Our research at SECP explores notions of subjectivity and well-being, media communication, public and policy engagement, activism and protest, historical and archaeological legacies, global environmental politics, creative approaches to climate engagement, women’s land rights, food sovereignty and security, environmental risks, water quality, conservation and management, political ecology.

Achievements in this area include:

Contact centresecp@brighton.ac.uk for more information on collaborating with us on our research into environmental and climate change 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's research in this area explores women and migration, mobility and mental health, transnational migration, climate induced migration and displacement, media coverage, young men’s experiences, diasporic identities and communities. 

Achievements in this area include:

Contact centresecp@brighton.ac.uk 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.

Decolonial practices and anti-racist politics 

Our members' work in this field includes research into refugee migration across and within North-South divides, undocumented migrants, asylum seekers and legal provision, borders and bordering, migrant health, housing, dreams, mobilities, immobilities, adolescents and mental health, smuggling, remittances, climate migration and displacement, media coverage, diasporic identities and communities, FGM in Europe, human rights.

Achievements in this area include:

Ashmore, N. Guernica Remakings: The Kieskamma Guernica

Contact centresecp@brighton.ac.uk for more information on collaborating with us on our research into decolonial practices and anti-racist politics, including studying for a PhD on the theme.

Keiskamma Guernica 2010: photograph by Robert Hofmey 

Dr Nicola Ashmore works with communities in South Africa, India and Mauritius as well as the United Kingdom to understand how the iconic Guernica painting is used to empower communities through collaborative remakings.  

Spatial inequalities and injustices 

Our research has included publications and projects on aspects of power and justice in relationship to: thinking power and inequality through space, 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.

Achievements in this area include:

Contact centresecp@brighton.ac.uk for more information on collaborating with us on our research into spatial politics, ethnicity and heritage, including studying for a PhD on the theme of power and equality within specific spaces and environments.

Faded and double exposed black and white photograph of a black father and daughter, smartly dressed on the rail of a ship, looking at New York, the Statue of Liberty visible.

Professor Darren Newbury was given The Royal Anthropological Institute's 2020 Photographic Studies Award for his co-edited book Women and Photography in Africa: Creative Practices and Feminist Challenges.

Image from Perspectives Americaines, October 1961. United States Information Agency collection, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

Envisioning new social and ecological futures 

Research in this area includes multidisciplinary research into rewilding, sustainability, conservation, species re-introduction, inter-species research, commoning practices, youth-generated climate futures, speculative fictions, aesthetics and the performance of community, Anthropocene imaginings and livings.

Achievements in this area include:

Contact centresecp@brighton.ac.uk for more information on collaborating with us on our research into new social and ecological visions for the future, including studying for a PhD on the theme.

Aerial view of green land next to urban space with white shapes drawn and labelled to show where community orchard developments will be. Image from research into continuous productive development.

Researchers Professor Andre Viljöen and Dr Katrin Bohn have developed the concept of Continous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL) and bring their research expertise in food-centred master planning to multi-national consortia, here focussing on the UK's Letchworth Garden City.

Our research and enterprise 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 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