Dr Kevin Grove

Lecturer in Human Geography
BA (honors) International Affairs (University of Cincinnati)
MA (The Ohio State University)
PhD (The Ohio State University)
Photograph of Dr Kevin Grove.

Contact

Email: keg12@aber.ac.uk
Office: K3, Llandinam
Phone: +44 (0)1970 622 592
Fax: +44 (0)1970 622 659

Responsibilities

  • IGES international recruitment committee member
  • IGES recruitment committee member

Teaching Areas

Contributes to:

  • Power, Place & Development (GG14210)
  • Geohazards (EA22810)
  • Nature, Environment & Sustainability (GG29220)
  • Geography Tutorial (GG22110)
  • Geography Fieldwork - New Zealand North (GG22400)
  • Geography Dissertation (GG34040)
  • Key Concepts in Human Geography (GGM3120)

Research

Research Interests

My research revolves around the broad question of how global liberal order is constructed and contested through both actual catastrophic ‘natural’ events and fears of future calamities.  It touches on several core areas, including: 

  • Environmental security
  • Geopolitics and development
  • Vulnerability, adaptation and resilience
  • Caribbean political economy

In brief, I bring political ecology research on disasters and development into conversation with recent work in political geography and critical international relations on biopolitical security.  This allows me to engage in research that critically expands our understanding of politics and power in disaster management.  

I’m particularly interested in studying how social and ecological contingencies are governed through disaster management policy and planning.  My dissertation research drew on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Jamaica’s national disaster management agency to explore two innovations that have become a central part of disaster resilience planning:  catastrophe insurance and community-based disaster management.  Analysing how civil servants engaged with the discourses and techniques of catastrophe insurance and community-based programming enabled me to provide an empirically grounded account of how disaster resilience initiatives extend neoliberal orderings of socio-ecological relations to new regions and populations. 

Looking forward, my future research will build on these findings to examine the possibilities for more radical forms of state practice and biopolitics.  My interest here is to elucidate the everyday forms of resistance civil servants engage in as they design and implement disaster resilience programs.  This research will point towards the possibilities for constructing a radical politics of environmental security that prioritizes combatting the manifold sources of suffering and human insecurity above abstract goals of ensuring systemic resilience.

Staff Publications

Peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and book reviews

2012

  1. Grove, K.  From Emergency Management to Managing Emergence:  A Genealogy of Jamaican Disaster Management.  Forthcoming in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.
  2. Grove, K.  Biopolitics.  Chapter contributed to Critical Environmental Politics, C. Dearth (ed.).  Forthcoming from Routledge.
  3. Grove, K.  2012.  Preempting the Next Disaster?  Catastrophe Insurance and the Financialization of Disaster Management.  Security Dialogue 43(2) 139-155.
  4. Grove, K.  2012.  Review of Simon Reid-Henry’s The Cuban Cure:  Reason and Resistance in Global Science for Environment and Planning D:  Society and Space. 

2010

  1. Grove, K.  2010.  Insuring ‘Our Common Future’?  Dangerous Climate Change and the Biopolitics of Environmental Security.  Geopolitics  15(3) 536-563.

2009

  1. Coleman, M. and Grove, K.  2009.  Biopolitics, Biopower and the ‘Return’ of Sovereignty.  Environment and Planning D:  Society and Space  27(3):  489-507.
  2. Grove, K.  2009.  Rethinking the Nature of Urban Environmental Politics:  Security, Subjectivity, and the Non-Human.  Geoforum  40(2):  207-216.

 

Selected Conference Proceedings

From Emergency Management to Managing Emergence: A Genealogy of Disaster Management in Jamaica. Paper presented at the Association of American Geographers Conference, New York, New York, February 2012. 

Adaptation Machines and the Politics of Catastrophe in Jamaica. Paper presented at the Critical Geography Conference, Worcester, Massachusetts, November 2011.

Pre-Empting Adaptation: The Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility and the Financialization of Disaster Management. Paper presented at the Association of American Geographers Conference, Seattle, Washington, April 2011.

Panelist, ‘Critical Perspectives on Disaster Management’ panel session at Association of American Geographers Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2009

Insuring Disaster, Securing Development. Paper presented at Critical Geopolitics 2008, Durham, England, September 2008.

What, Me Worry? Global Warming, Green Technology, and the Privatization of Insecurity. Paper presented at Rethinking Precarity, Columbus, Ohio, January 2007.

 

Selected Conference Organization

Co-organizer (with Garnet Kindervater), ‘Crisis and Critique in a Resilient Order’ panel session at the Millennium Journal of International Studies conference on ‘Materialism and World Politics’. London, England, October 2012. 

Co-organizer (with Julian Reid), ‘The Biopolitics of Climate Change Security’ paper sessions at the Association of American Geographers Conference. New York, New York, February 2012.

Co-organizer (with David Lansing and Jennifer Rice), Critical Geographies of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation paper sessions at the Association of American Geographers Conference. Washington, D.C., April 2010. 

 

Professional Organizations

Association of American Geographers, member

International Studies Association, member