Madelaine Joyce

I am a third year PhD candidate in the Geography Department at Royal Holloway supervised by Dr Rachael Squire and Professor Peter Adey. I previously completed my undergraduate (BSc Geography) and masters degrees (MSc Global Futures) within the department. My research interests are centred around feminist geopolitics, and feminist and political geographies more broadly, with a particular focus on volume, elements, territory, non-human agency, assemblages, and resilience. My past areas of study include the visual culture of the Korean Demilitarised Zone, and the geopolitics of the Cypriot Buffer Zone, which involved in-situ fieldwork in negotiation with UNFICYP. 

My doctoral project, funded by RHUL, further explores the Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) and aims to disrupt hegemonic understandings of the borderland which consider the space solely as a stagnant no-man’s land. Through the application of voluminous approaches and creative methods my project intends to ‘enliven’ the borderland in distinctive yet interrelated ways, with a particular focus on the animals, elements, sounds, and bodies which constitute, inhabit, and abound within the space. In doing so, my project hopes to demonstrate the complexities of and possibilities for the DMZ, moving beyond separation and exclusion to instead consider exchange, solidarity, and perhaps even reconciliation.

Outside of my doctoral research, I am also interested in the current state of higher education in the UK, the challenges of working within the neoliberal academy, and the future of academia. Alongside my co-author, Jasmine Joanes, we employ a feminist geographical approach in order to subvert traditional narratives of resilience which exist within the academy and have recently published our first article on this. Our work remains ongoing as we both attempt to navigate our ways through the academy as PhD students. 

I use she/her/hers pronouns. 

Within the Geography Department, I have contributed to both Undergraduate and Postgraduate teaching on the following courses:

GG2001 Geographical Techniques II (UG) Guest Lecture Speaker

GG2052 Political Geography (UG) Guest Seminar Speaker

GG5011 Key Concepts in Geopolitics and Security (PGT) Visiting Lecturer/Seminar Leader