Dr Lucy Jackson

Teaching Fellow in Human Geography
BA in Human Geography with First Class Honours (2006) The University of Wales, Aberystwyth
MA in ‘Practising Human Geography’ (2007). The University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
PhD ‘Alternative sites of citizenship: emotions, performance and belonging for female migrants’ (2012). The University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Photograph of Dr Lucy Jackson.

Contact

Email: luj@aber.ac.uk
Office: J5
Phone: +44 (0)1970 622 583

Teaching Areas

Module coordinator for:

  • GG10210: The city and the country: processes of conflict and change
  • GG25610: The geographies of late capitalism

Contributes to:

  • GG13020: Key skills for geographers
  • GG25030: Research skills in human geography
  • GG12710: Global environmental issues
  • GG10110: People, place and nation
  • GG22420: Level 2 geography field course (New York and Dublin residential trips)
  • GG11910: Level 1 tutorial
  • GG22110: Level 2 tutorial
  • GG26210: The geographies of the United States (Academic year 2010-2011)
  • GGM2340: Research methods in Political geography
  • GGM2230: Research methods in human geography
  • GGM3120: Key concepts and debates in human geography
  • GG34040: Geography dissertation (supervision)
    • Topics of supervision include:
      • The geographies of disability
      • Redundant masculinities: identity and assumed gender roles of male nurses
      • Urban regeneration
      • Place identity
      • Preservation of rurality
      • Gated communities and segregation
      • The US-Mexico border- border identities

Research

Group Affiliation

Research Interests

I am interested in keys issues surrounding debates on citizenship; I am particularly interested in how boundaries, place and territory are being reworked by different liminal groups within societies. In doing so, I understand citizenship as an emotional and fluid, as well as institutionalised and formal, set of practices and performances. My research goes beyond current literature into the political and legalised aspects of citizenship experiences by seeking out the emotional, everyday, practised and performed spaces of citizenship. I draw on insights from psychotherapy and sociological theory to investigate the emotionalised aspects of individualised citizenship experiences.

My PhD research was focused on the experiences of female migrants, investigating aspects of identity formation, constructions of belonging and negotiations of a sense of place. This research builds on literatures that construe identity as a multi-faceted form of subjectivity, incorporating a complex series of understandings and feelings, as well as embodiments and practices. From this research I argue that citizenship has three fundamental dimensions, it is situated in and through communities, is emotionally laden, and is practiced and performed through aspects of everyday life.

This research investigated how women, who, as a group, have traditionally been barred from more formal forms of citizenship gain a sense of inclusion/exclusion from the state via their participation within community action groups and organisations. The PhD research focused upon two key case studies, those of South Wales and Singapore and draws upon participation in a number of voluntary organisations and groups. I am therefore interested in the emotional accounts of citizenship, which are located in aspects of home, belonging, safety and acceptance. This connects with the way in which an individual may connect to place and therefore develop a sense of place.

As a geographer, I am interested in how landscape plays a crucial role in symbolising state aspirations, allows for a differential means of access to particular state facilities, and also prompts particular understandings and emotions concerning the individual’s relationship to the state. I am also interested, however, in how individuals gain a sense of inclusion/exclusion from the state via their participation within community action groups. These are predicated upon a particular vision of the state and its citizens, and also enable its members to practice a more active form of citizenship through a series of networks. Indeed, while foundational attitudes and emotions concerning citizenship will have been formed through habitus, the role of key events via active membership are crucial to how individuals think through their relation to the state, as well as to other citizens.

My research also draws on countertopographical narratives seeking to connect small scale, detailed and in-depth stories to wider social and cultural conditions. This follows in the work of Cindi Katz, Jennifer Hyndman and Alison Mountz (among others) whose research into the intimate sites, scales and practice of globalisation is producing new direction in feminist geopolitical research.

Key research areas:

  • Citizenship
  • Migration
  • Identity
  • Women’s groups and organisations (the geography of)
  • Geographies of the state and everyday interactions
  • Territorial assumptions and boundaries
  • Countertopographical analyses of phenomena
  • The body
  • Embodied research methods
  • Research as lived experience

The research I have conducted is inter-disciplinary in nature, working across the social sciences, and incorporating elements of psychotherapy and sociology, which have allowed me to gain in depth knowledge and experience of the ways in which migration, and the exclusions individuals face in that process, has led to different phenomena within the human social world today. My research into citizenship also has a political element. In contemporary human geography, I feel it is necessary to highlight the ways in which the academy can bridge the gap with public policy, allowing our research to detail future avenues for public policy and the public agenda more widely.


Biography

Lucy gained her BA in Human Geography with First Class Honours in 2006 and her MA in ‘Practising Human Geography’ in 2007 from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She has recently completed a PhD in Human Geography, supervised by Professor Michael Woods and Dr Deborah Dixon (January 2012)

Lucy’s primary research interest lies within the field of feminist geopolitics. Her PhD research project, entitled ‘Alternative sites of citizenship: emotions, performance and belonging for female migrants’ focused upon ideas of citizenship as a relational practice recognising it’s ever more social and cultural nature. This research looked not only into the everyday practices and performances of citizenship, but also sought to understand how identities are formed and developed through different contextual considerations. This research focused upon two cases studies: upon migrant groups in Cardiff, South Wales, where work was conducted with a number of voluntary organisations to help understand the liminal spaces of women’s citizenship; and Singapore, where Lucy has worked with many women from different backgrounds, including expatriate women, foreign domestic workers, and long term female migrants, to gain in-depth knowledge into the lived practices and experiences of citizenship in a modern and hyper-mobile world. Whilst in Singapore, Lucy collaborated with a number of non-governmental organisations, including the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) and Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2).


Staff Publications

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

In Preparation

  1. Jackson, L (in preparation for Area). ‘Settlement, home and feelings of belonging amongst female migrants in South Wales’
  2. Jackson, L (in preparation for Gender, place & culture). ‘Why are we waiting? Longing for stillness and stability in refugee populations in South Wales’.
  3. Jackson, L (in preparation for Environment & Planning D). ‘Emotional citizenship and the capacity to feel: Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore’

2011

  1. Jackson, L (2011). ‘Mixed methods in emotive research: negotiating multiple methods and creating narratives in feminist embodied work on citizenship’. Graduate Journal of Asia Pacific studies volume 7 (2)

 

Conference Papers

2012      

  1. ‘Navigating the border of the migrant body: stigmatisation and categorisation of the body in place’, AAG New York (February 2012)

2011      

  1. ‘Rethinking the relational citizen: Spaces, sites and scales of immigrant citizenship’ presented at Human Geography symposium, Gregynog (May 2011). 
  2. ‘Immigration and citizenship: practising integration and citizenship through community engagement’ AAG, April 2011.
  3. ‘Enfolding and Expelling Migrant Bodies: Notes from Singapore’. Presented in session series: Contemporary geographic research on (im)migration. AAG Washington (2011)

2010      

  1. ‘Settlement, home and feelings of belonging amongst female migrants in South Wales’. Presented at ‘journeys and justice: forced migration, seeking asylum, and human rights. University of Leeds, January 2010.

2009      

  1. ‘Rethinking the relational citizen: Gendered notions of identity and difference within Singapore’. Presented in session series Feminist engagements with the geopolitical. RGS-IBG Annual conference, Manchester, September 2009
  2. ‘Rethinking the relational citizen: implications for and thinking about fieldwork’. Presented at RGS-IBG Postgraduate Mid-term conference, Plymouth March 2009

 2008   

  1. “Rethinking the relational citizen: Space, place and belonging” Gregynog paper presentation, Newtown mid Wales, May 2008

 

Conference organisation

2010      

  1. RGS-IBG postgraduate mid-term conference ‘Engaging Geographies’. Aberystwyth University, 5th and 6th March (chair of organising committee)

 

Organised Sessions

2009      

  1. ‘Feminist engagements with the geopolitical’ with Deborah Dixon. RGS-IBG Annual conference, Manchester. September 2009

 

Other Activities

2008-9  

  1. Co-coordinator ‘Dialogues in Human geography’ seminar series, Aberystwyth University