Professor Deborah Dixon

Professor
Undergraduate degree in Geography (Cambridge University)
MSc (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
PhD (University of Kentucky) Photograph of Professor Deborah Dixon.

Contact

Email: dxd@aber.ac.uk
Office: K4
Phone: +44 (0)1970 622 538
Fax: +44 (0)1970 622 659

Responsibilities

  • On research leave until 2013

Teaching Areas

  • On research leave until 2013

Research

Group Affiliation

Research Interests

My research is driven by an interest in the ideas, concepts, ethics and politics of both poststructuralist and feminist theories, but is very much grounded in case study analysis of monstrous, media and marginal geographies (see below), topics which overlap time and again in often unexpected ways. My intent is to explore the conceptual and methodological possibilities afforded by these theoretical framings and, in doing so, to think through their import for geographers, as well as the import of a geographical imagination for these. I value a collaborative process of knowledge production and have undertaken research projects with colleagues at the University of Arizona (John Paul Jones III, Sallie Marston), East Carolina University (Holly Hapke, Emily Selby), the University of Texas-Austin (Leo Zonn), San Diego State (Stuart Aitken), the University of Toronto (Sue Ruddick) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Keith Woodward).

A. On the histories and spatialities of Geography

1. How does Poststructuralism establish an analytic, as well as critical, space within Geography?
Poststructuralist thought – which initially emerged within Geography through an emphasis on epistemic critique, but which has more recently asserted its ontological claims – pivots around a set of fundamental questions. These include: If meaning and representation are indeterminate and contextual, and if, as a consequence, the ‘real’ world is ‘constructed’ as an ontological fact, then how does power work to produce its truths? And: If difference in the world is not a remainder from or a bad copy of a singular Identity, but is rather the immanent force characterizing all materialities, including words and meanings, then how, in the shift in thought that moves from ‘being’ to ‘becoming’, do we go forth in the world to think and speak in terms of things and their qualities?

For more on these questions see: 

  • Dixon, D. P. and Straughan, E.R. (In press) Affect. In, Schein, R., Johnson, N. & Winders, J. (eds.) New Companion to Cultural Geography. New York: Wiley Blackwell.
  • Dixon, D. P. and Straughan, E. R. (2010) Geographies of Touch/Touched by Geography, Geography Compass 4.5: 449 - 459.
  • Shaw, I. R., Dixon, D. P. and Jones, J. P. (2010) Theoretical Starting Points. In Gomez, B. and Jones, J. P. (eds.) Geographic Research: A first course. New York: Blackwell.
  • Dixon D. P., Jones III, J. P. and Woodward, K. (2009) Poststructural Geographies. In Kitchen R. & Thrift, N. (eds.) International Encyclopeadia of Human Geography. Elsevier: Oxford. Pp. 396-407.
  • Dixon D. P., Woodward, K. & Jones III, J. P. (2008) On the other hand ... dialectics, Environment and Planning A 40.11: 2549-2561.
  • Dixon D. P. & Whitehead M. (2008) Technological Trajectories: Old and new dialogues in Geography and Technology Studies, Social and Cultural Geography 9.6: 601-11.
  • Dixon D.P. & Jones III J. P. (2005) Derridean Geographies. Antipode 37.2: 242-45.
  • Dixon D.P. & Jones III J. P. (2004) What Next? Environment and Planning A 36.3: 381-90.
  • Dixon D.P. & Jones III J. P. (2003) Poststructuralism. In Duncan J., Johnson N. & Schein R. (eds.) A Companion to Cultural Geography. Blackwell, Oxford. Pp. 79-107.
  • Dixon D.P. & Jones III J. P. (1998) My Dinner with Derrida, or Spatial Analysis and Poststructuralism do Lunch. Environment and Planning A 30.2: 247-260. Dixon D.P. & Jones III J. P. (1996) For a Supercalifragalisticexpealidocious Scientific Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86. 4: 767-779.

2. Is there a distinctive Feminist Geography/ies? Feminist geography has been, and continues to be, articulated as an arena of thought and practice that has posed various conceptual and methodological challenges for the discipline as a whole, a framing that renders it ‘critical’ yet somewhat ‘insubstantial’ outside of this response-mode. I am interested in the inclusivities and exclusivities that emerge from this framing, as well as the manner in which feminist geographers negotiate a sensitivity to power relations within the field, an awareness of the ethical role of the researcher and a commitment to the progressive deployment of research, as well as an understanding of how the everyday lives of the researcher and the researched proceed alongside overlapping discursive frames that seek to foreclose difference.

For more on these issues see:

  • Dixon, D. P. & Marston, S.  (2011) Feminist Engagements with Geopolitics, Gender, Place and Culture 18.4: 445-53.
  • Dixon D.P. & Jones III J.P. (2005) Feminist Geographies of Difference, Relation and Construction. In, Valentine G. & Aitken S. (eds.) Approaches to Human Geography. Sage: Thousand Oaks CA. Pp. 42-56.
  • Jenkins S., Jones V. & Dixon D.P. (2003) Guest Editorial: Thinking/Doing the ‘F’ word. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 2.1: 57-63

B. Case Study Research

1. Monstrous Geographies Jacques Derrida suggests that one of the central, ethical dilemmas facing the individual is the question of how to extend hospitality to the ‘other’ in a manner that does not simply reduce that otherness to an aberration or anomaly. That is, how to recognise difference as co-existing in an-other lexicon to the one we ourselves inhabit. For Derrida, the monster is emblematic of such a dilemma. It provokes horror and wonder by virtue of its refusal to be confined within any categorical system other than its own and yet its imminent arrival allows space for the consideration of a host of new possibilities, of new modes of being and doing. Though each age and time has its own particular monsters to contend with, this experience can tell us something about our past, insofar as the fear and anxiety the monstrous provokes bring to light a way of life that has but the semblance of order, but it can also serve as a portent, directing us to a future that exceeds prediction and that is, for Derrida at least, all the more welcome for this.

For more on these monstrous irruptions see: 

  • Dixon, D. P. and Ruddick, S. M. (2011) Monstrous Irruptions, Cultural Geographies 18.4: 431-33.
  • Dixon, D. P. (2011) Scream: The sound of the monstrous, Cultural Geographies 18.4: 435-55.
  • Dixon D. P. (2010) Creating the Semi-Living: On politics, aesthetics and the more-than-human, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34.4: 411-425
  • Dixon D.P. (2008) The Blade and the Claw: Science, Art and the Lab-Borne Monster, Social and Cultural Geography 9.6: 671-92.
  • Dixon D.P. (2007) I Hear Dead People: Science, Technology and the Resonant Universe, Social and Cultural Geography, 8.5: 719-33.
  • Dixon D.P. (2007) A Benevolent and Skeptical Inquiry: Exploring ‘Fortean Geographies’ with the Mothman, Journal of Cultural Geographies, 14.2: 189-210.
2. Media Geographies Geographers have deployed film as: a mimetic of the real world, such that peoples and places can be represented in as authentic a manner as possible to peers and students; a series of images and sounds that relay intersubjective meanings; a medium that allows investigation of the production of dominant ideologies; a site of resistance, wherein the stability of any meaning is open to critical scrutiny; and as an affective site. Film remains a crucial site for the exegesis of ‘new’ theory in a wide array of sub-fields and a diverse set of institutional contexts – why?


For more on this question see: 

  • Aitken, S. C. & Dixon D.P. (2011) Avarice and Tenderness in Cinematic Landscapes. In Dear, M., Luria, S. and Richardson, D. (eds.) Geography and the Humanities. New York: Routledge. Pp. 196-205.
  • Dixon, D. P. (2010) Analysing Meaning. In Gomez, B. and Jones, J. P. (eds.) Geographic Research: A first course. New York: Blackwell. Pp. 392-407.
  • Dixon D.P., Zonn L. E. & Bascom, J. (2008) Post-ing the Cinema: Reassessing analytic stances toward a geography of film. In Lukinbeal, C. & Zimmermann, S. (eds.) A Geography of Cinema - A Cinematic World. Franz Steiner Verlag: Stuttgart. Pp. 25-50.
  • Dixon D.P. (2008) Independent Cinema in the US: the politics of personal passions. In Lukinbeal, C. & Zimmermann, S. (eds.) A Geography of Cinema - A Cinematic World. Franz Steiner Verlag: Stuttgart. Pp. 65-83.
  • Aitken S. C. & Dixon D. P. (2006) Imagining Geographies of Film. Erdkunde: Archiv Fur Wissenschaftliche Geographie 60: 326-36.
  • Dixon D.P. & Zonn L. E.(2005) Confronting the Geopolitical Aesthetic: Fredric Jameson, The Perfumed Nightmare and the Perilous Place of Third Cinema. Geopolitics, 10.2: 290-315.
  • Dixon D.P. & Grimes J. (2004) On Capitalism, Masculinity and Whiteness in a Dialectical Landscape: The Case of Tarzan and the Tycoon,” Geojournal, 59.4: 265-275.
  • Dixon D.P. & Zonn L. E. (2003) Film Networks and the Place(s) of Technology. In Brunn S., Cutter S. & Harrington Jr J.W. (eds.) TechchnoEarth: A Social History of Geography. Kluwer Press: Amsterdam. Pp. 233-56.
  • Cresswell T. & Dixon D.P. (eds.) (2002) Engaging Film: Geographies of Mobility and Identity, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham MD.
  • Selby E. & Dixon D.P. (1998) Between Worlds: Considering Celtic, Feminine Identities in The Secret of Roan Inish. Gender, Place, and Culture, 5. 1: 5-24.
3. Marginal Geographies The adoption of the phrase ‘diverse economies’ can be interpreted as an interest in ontologically secure sets of social relations that allow for production and consumption, but are as yet discrete in some form or another because of the unfinished, penetrative project of one, dominant, form of such relations, namely capitalism. In light of Gibson-Graham’s (1996) thorough and wide-ranging feminist deconstruction of precisely this framing, however, I think it has become clear that ‘diverse’ addresses the differential social construction of the ‘economic,’ with a view to the continual questioning by academics of the theoretical construction of their objects of analysis. Though economy geography as a subfield has maintained a certain ‘distance’ from this avowedly anti-essentialist understanding, others have begun to examine the socio-historical context within which key concepts are deployed and the ramifications of their deployment within as well as outside of the academy, thereby aiding and abetting the emergence of poststructuralist analysis as a recognized research pathway within economic geography My own work on US rural economies falls squarely within this remit.

For more on this effort see: 

  • Dixon, D. P. (2011) Life on the Margins: A feminist counter-topography of H-2B Workers. In FitzGerald, S. (ed.) Vulnerable Subjectivities: The Sate, Normativity and Women. London: Routledge.  Pp. 69-91.
  • Dixon D.P. & Hapke H. (2003) Cultivating Discourse: The Social Construction of Agricultural Legislation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93.1: 142-64.
  • Dixon D.P. (2003)Working with Crabs. In Cloke P. (ed.) Country Visions. Pearson, London. Pp. 116-135.
  • Selby E., Dixon D.P. & Hapke H. (2001) A Woman’s Place in the Crab Processing Industry of Eastern North Carolina. Gender, Place and Culture, 8. 3: 229-253.
  • Dixon D.P. (1997) The Only Game in Town: The Cultural Politics of Casino Gambling in Cape Girardeau and Scott City, Missouri. In Meyer-Arendt K. & Hartmann R. (eds.) Casino Gambling in America: Origins, Trends, and Impacts. CCC Publishing: New York. 239-256. 

1. How does Poststructuralism establish an analytic, as well as critical, space within Geography?
Poststructuralist thought – which initially emerged within Geography through an emphasis on epistemic critique, but which has more recently asserted its ontological claims – pivots around a set of fundamental questions. These include: If meaning and representation are indeterminate and contextual, and if, as a consequence, the ‘real’ world is ‘constructed’ as an ontological fact, then how does power work to produce its truths? And: If difference in the world is not a remainder from or a bad copy of a singular Identity, but is rather the immanent force characterizing all materialities, including words and meanings, then how, in the shift in thought that moves from ‘being’ to ‘becoming’, do we go forth in the world to think and speak in terms of things and their qualities?

For more on these questions see: 

  • Dixon, D. P. and Straughan, E.R. (In press) Affect. In, Schein, R., Johnson, N. & Winders, J. (eds.) New Companion to Cultural Geography. New York: Wiley Blackwell.
  • Dixon, D. P. and Straughan, E. R. (2010) Geographies of Touch/Touched by Geography, Geography Compass 4.5: 449 - 459.
  • Shaw, I. R., Dixon, D. P. and Jones, J. P. (2010) Theoretical Starting Points. In Gomez, B. and Jones, J. P. (eds.) Geographic Research: A first course. New York: Blackwell.
  • Dixon D. P., Jones III, J. P. and Woodward, K. (2009) Poststructural Geographies. In Kitchen R. & Thrift, N. (eds.) International Encyclopeadia of Human Geography. Elsevier: Oxford. Pp. 396-407.
  • Dixon D. P., Woodward, K. & Jones III, J. P. (2008) On the other hand ... dialectics, Environment and Planning A 40.11: 2549-2561.
  • Dixon D. P. & Whitehead M. (2008) Technological Trajectories: Old and new dialogues in Geography and Technology Studies, Social and Cultural Geography 9.6: 601-11.
  • Dixon D.P. & Jones III J. P. (2005) Derridean Geographies. Antipode 37.2: 242-45.
  • Dixon D.P. & Jones III J. P. (2004) What Next? Environment and Planning A 36.3: 381-90.
  • Dixon D.P. & Jones III J. P. (2003) Poststructuralism. In Duncan J., Johnson N. & Schein R. (eds.) A Companion to Cultural Geography. Blackwell, Oxford. Pp. 79-107.
  • Dixon D.P. & Jones III J. P. (1998) My Dinner with Derrida, or Spatial Analysis and Poststructuralism do Lunch. Environment and Planning A 30.2: 247-260. Dixon D.P. & Jones III J. P. (1996) For a Supercalifragalisticexpealidocious Scientific Geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86. 4: 767-779. 


Biography

Deborah graduated with an undergraduate degree in Geography from Cambridge University before gaining an MSc from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD from the University of Kentucky. Deborah was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, East Carolina University, before moving to Aberystwyth University in 2000. Deborah has been Book Review Editor for the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and Area, is on the editorial boards of Dialogues in Human Geography and Aether: The Journal of Media Geography, and is Editor of Gender, Place and Culture. She has served on the boards of the Geographic Perspectives on Women group of the AAG, and the Women and Geography Study group of the RGS-IBG. Currently Deborah's research is concerned with the geographic deployment of poststructural and feminist theories, particularly as they relate to a range of 'monstrous' topics such as BioArt, touch and the anomalous.

Additional Interests

Recent News

Deborah is part of a UK-US team that has been awarded a half million NSF-AHRC grant to research, ‘Art-Science Collaborations: Bodies and Environments.’

This three-year, international research project addresses contemporary art-science collaborations through field-work with key organizations and individuals in this field. Engaging with the practices and experiences of the production, dissemination and reception of these works, the project seeks to understand the institutional, political, epistemic and technological conditions that not only enable art-science collaborations to emerge, but which also shape their development and wider impact.  More broadly, the project looks to situate these collaborations in the context of ongoing debates across the humanities and social sciences regarding humanism and post-humanism; contemporary re-engagements with the cosmos; and pedagogic challenges to disciplinary practices.  The research is conducted by an international team of eight researchers whose experiences span the sciences, social sciences and the arts, and is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation (USA) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK).

Publications emerging from this project include:

  • Dixon DP, Straughan ER and Hawkins H. 2011 When Artists Enter the Laboratory, Science 331.6019 (February): 860.
  • Dixon DP. 2011. Notes from a Cold Climate, Nature 476 (August): 398
  • Dixon DP, Hawkins H. and Ingram M. 2011. Blurring the Boundaries, Nature 472 (April): 417.
  • Hawkins H, Dixon D P and Straughan E R. 2011 “Exhibiting Experiment.” Looking Back and Moving On - A Retrospective Moment for Art-Sci Organizations, Leonardo Reviews Quarterly (July): http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/jul2011/hawkins_exhibits.php.
  • Straughan E R, Dixon D P and Hawkins H. 2011. U-N-F-O-L-D, Leonardo Reviews Quarterly (May): http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/may2011/straughan_unfold.php.

From 2011-12 three ‘Access to Masters’ studentships will be associated with the grant. These are:

  • Daniel Beech, “Creative GIS,” Access to Masters Studentship, with Environment Systems.
  • Delyth Robinson, “Life Science Aesthetics,” Access to Masters Studentship, with the National Botanical Garden of Wales.
  • Dominic Walker, “Life science Heritage,” Access to Masters Studentship, with the Ceredigion Museum.
 

Postgraduate students

Current:

Elizabeth Straughan

Jennifer Turner

Staff Publications

Peer Reviewed Book Chapters & Journal Articles

2011

  1. Dixon DP and Ruddick SM. 2011 Monstrous Irruptions, Cultural Geographies 18.4. 431-33
  2. Dixon DP. 2011 Scream: The sound of the monstrous, Cultural Geographies 18.4. 433-55
  3. Aitken SC and Dixon DP. 2011 Avarice and Tenderness in Cinematic Landscapes of the American West. In Dear, M., Ketchum, J., Luria, S. & Richardson, D. (eds.) Geohumanities: Art, history, text at the edge of place. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 196-205.
  4. Dixon DP. 2011 Life on the Margins: A feminist counter-topography of H-2B Workers. In FitzGerald, S. (ed.) Vulnerable Subjectivities: The State, Normativity and Women. London: Routledge. Pp. 69-91.
  5. Dixon DP and Marston S. 2011 Feminist Engagements with the Geopolitical, Gender, Place and Culture 18.4. 445-53
  6. Dixon DP, Straughan ER and Hawkins H. 2011 When Artists Enter the Laboratory, Science 331.6019 (February): 860.
  7. Dixon DP. 2011. Notes from a Cold Climate, Nature 476 (August): 398
  8. Dixon DP, Hawkins H. and Ingram M. 2011. Blurring the Boundaries, Nature 472 (April): 417.
  9. Hawkins H, Dixon D P and Straughan E R. 2011 “Exhibiting Experiment.” Looking Back and Moving On - A Retrospective Moment for Art-Sci Organizations, Leonardo Reviews Quarterly (July): http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/jul2011/hawkins_exhibits.php
  10. Straughan E R, Dixon D P and Hawkins H. 2011. U-N-F-O-L-D, Leonardo Reviews Quarterly (May): http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/may2011/straughan_unfold.php.

2010

  1. Dixon DP, 2010. Analysing Meaning. In Gomez, B. and Jones, J. P. eds. Geographic Research: A first course. New York: Blackwell. Pp. 392-407.
  2. Shaw IR, Dixon DP, Jones JP. 2010. Theoretical Starting Points. In Gomez, B. and Jones, J. P. eds. Geographic Research: A first course. New York: Blackwell. Pp. 9-25.
  3. Dixon DP, and Straughan ER. 2010. Geographies of Touch/Touched by Geography, Geography Compass 4.5: 449 - 459.

2009

  1. Dixon DP. 2009. Creating the Semi-Living: On Politics, Aesthetics and the More-than-Human. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34(4): 411-425.
  2. Dixon DP, Jones III JP, Woodward K. 2009. Poststructuralist Geographies. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, : 396-407.

2008

  1. Dixon DP, Whitehead M. 2008. Technological Trajectories: Old and new dialogues in Geography and Technology Studies. Social and Cultural Geography, 9(6): 601-11.
  2. Dixon DP, Woodward K, Jones JP. 2008. On the other hand... dialectics. Environment and Planning A, 40(11): 2549-2561. DOI
  3. Dixon DP. 2008. The Blade and the Claw: Science, Art and the creation of the lab-borne monster. Social and Cultural Geography, 9(6): 671-92.
  4. Dixon DP, Zonn LE, Bascom J. 2008. Post-ing the Cinema: Reassessing analytic stances towards a geography of film. In Lukinbeal, C. & Zimmermann, S. (eds.) A Geography of Cinema - A Cinematic World. Franz Steiner Verlag: Stuttgart. Pp. 25-50.
  5. Dixon DP. 2008. Independent Cinema in the US: the politics of personal passions. In Lukinbeal, C. & Zimmermann, S. (eds.), A Geography of Cinema - A Cinematic World. Franz Steiner Verlag: Stuttgart. Pp. 65-83.

2007

  1. Dixon DP. 2007. A Benevolent and Skeptical Inquiry: Exploring ‘Fortean Geographies’ with the Mothman. Journal of Cultural Geographies, 14(2): 189-210. DOI
  2. Dixon DP. 2007. I Hear Dead People: Science, Technology and the Resonant Universe. Social and Cultural Geography, 8(5): 719-35. DOI
  3. Dixon DP, Zonn LE. 2007. Confronting the Geopolitical Aesthetic: Fredric Jameson, The Perfumed Nightmare and the Perilous Place of Third Cinema. Cinema and Popular Geo-politics, : 95-110.

2006

  1. Aitken SC, Dixon DP. 2006. Imagining geographies of film. Erdkunde: Archiv Für Wissenschaftliche Geographie, 60(4): 326-336.
  2. Dixon DP. 2006. Film, Geography and. Encyclopedia of Human Geography, : 165-67.
  3. Dixon DP. 2006. Realism. Encyclopedia of Human Geography, : 403-4.
  4. Dixon DP. 2006. Existentialism. Encyclopedia of Human Geography, : 143-44.

2005

  1. Dixon DP, Jones III JP. 2005. Derridean geographies. Antipode, 37: 242-245.
  2. Dixon DP, Zonn LE. 2005. Confronting the Geopolitical Aesthetic: Fredric Jameson, The Perfumed Nightmare and the Perilous Place of Third Cinema. Geopolitics, 10(2): 290-315. DOI
  3. Dixon DP, Jones III JP. 2005. Feminist Geographies of Difference, Relation and Construction. Approaches to Human Geography, : 42-56.