Professor Katherine Brickell

I am a feminist geographer whose research cross-cuts social, political, legal, and development geography. A key thread which connects my work is its focus on the domestic sphere as a precarious space of everyday life.

I have 15 years of area-focused expertise in Cambodia where I research the gendered geographies of domestic and working life, including violence against women, forced eviction, and most recently ‘modern slavery’ in the construction industry. Since 2016 I have also begun collaboratively working in London and Dublin to understand residents’ experiences of newly-built modular housing by local government authorities turning to prefabrication as a (contested) means of addressing housing shortages for homeless families in both cities. 

In recognition of research excellence, I was conferred the Gill Memorial Award by the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in 2014 and the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2016. I am an editor of the journal Gender, Place and Culture (2017 ongoing) and former role as Chair of the RGS-IBG Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group (2016-2018).

Current postdoctoral mentoring

(2018-2020) Laurie Parsons (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow)

(2017-2019) Sabina Lawreniuk (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow) ''Migration as Distinction? Class, consumption and rural-urban migration in contemporary Cambodia'

Current doctoral supervision

Alice Reynolds (ESRC-funded collaborative award with Dublin City Council) [Co-supervisor]

Valentine Gavard (RHUL-funded) [Sole supervisor]

Will Jamieson (TECHNE-funded) [Co-supervisor]

Laura Shipp [Co-supervisor]

Naomi Graham (ESRC-funded) ‘Sheltering from Violence: Women’s Experiences of Safe Houses in Cambodia’. [Sole supervisor]

Yunting Qi [advisor]

Past doctoral supervision

Mel Nowicki (funded by RHUL Crossland Award) 'Squatting and the city: Criminal(ised) Geographies of Home and Resistance'. [Sole supervisor]

Mary Cobbett (funded by ESRC CASE with World Association of Girl Guides & Girl Scouts) ‘Empowering Girls to Claim Rights? Non-Formal Education and the “Stop the Violence” Campaign in Kenya’. [Sole supervisor]

Laura Prazeres (funded by SSHRC, Canada) ‘Learning Beyond Borders: International Student Mobility to the Global South’. [Sole supervisor]

Tianfeng Liu. ‘Transnational Academic Mobility: The Experience of Chinese and British Academic Migrants in a Sino-UK Joint Venture University’. [Co-supervisor with Katie Willis]

Liu Chen (funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China) ‘Food, Home and Family-making in Contemporary Guangzhou’. [Advisor]

Yuko Misu ‘Japan's assistance for self-reliant development in rural Malawi: philosophy, field practice, and role of individual actors’ (Passed November 2015) [Advisor]