Current Research

This research combines critical logistics studies with mobilities studies to recognise and interrogate the diverse mobility practices that take place within supply chains. More importantly, it reflects upon the power these hold, the injustices embedded within them, and their intransigence.

I started out fascinated by lorry drivers, working with this group of workers to understand: their roles in net zero road freight, how automation was changing their experiences and subject positions, and gendered mobilities. This work led to the Trucking Lives project (below).

I am now working with colleagues to interrogate urban logistical mobilities, particularly in the context of urban proximity agendas (e.g., ‘15 minute city’). This work raises questions about distribution centres and their effects on local populations, mobile working lives, retail real estate and more.

My research has shown how:

• ideologies of ‘just-in-time’ logistics are lived by workers - often clashing with bodily and family needs.

• the ‘unsafe trucker’ is used to justify investment in automation technologies; and

• shifting logistical configurations re/produce distinct discourses of technology change and its implications in road freight.

I am PI on the Trucking Lives project, funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council, and part of their Transforming Working Lives programme.

I work closely with a phenomenal group of scholars from Oxford, Sheffield, Newcastle and Durham. The research team consists of:

• Dr AC Davidson

• Prof Al James

• Emerita Prof Nicky Gregson

• Dr Kaveri Medappa

We are also partnered with sectoral actors, and have spent a lot of time presenting our findings at industry events and in trade magazines.

Take a look at our project website to learn more: www.truckinglives.co.uk

We also have a sister project ‘Pets in the Cab’ which looks at the practice of taking companion animals in trucks - something that is very common in north America but far less common in the UK.

In this project we examine the multi-species practices of care that are performed in road haulage.

For the past 5 or more years, I have been working with colleagues from Germany, the UK and Aotearoa New Zealand (the ‘Freiburg Group’ so named after our initial meeting in Freiburg!). The team includes:

• Prof Stefan Gössling

• Prof James Higham

• Prof Scott Cohen

• Dr Paul Hanna

• Dr Nicole Cocolas

We are a passionate group of scholars concerned with the rapid and sustained rise in air travel, and its disastrous effects on the climate. Our work has shown the ways the sector claims ‘climate compatible growth’ which science has repeatedly shown to be impossible without radical technological advancements.

The research our group does is motivated by the injustices associated with aviation, and raises questions about what a climate compatible aviation would or could look like. In particular, our work has shown:

• that half of leisure flights lack explicit importance;

• how discourses and enactments of ‘sustainable aviation’ are locked into gendered environmentalism;

• how carbon-intensive transport modes - like aviation - are socially normalised through social media posts and ‘influencer’ culture; and

• how the nation state performs a variety of roles that benefit from and support aviation, creating conflicts with the state’s climate targets.

In 2013, my PhD supervisor and colleague Prof James Higham and I started a programme of research in Aotearoa NZ on academic mobilities. We found this to be a critical area of scholarship for two clear reasons, 1. in Aotearoa we were heavily dependent on aviation even for short haul travel - there were few alternatives, and the interconnected (‘globalised’) academic system told academics they needed to travel to stay relevant - and to gain promotion (we showed how uni policy actually incentivised travel), and 2. because some academics - and many of our colleagues working on climate issues - were travelling a lot. In many ways, academia represents society - with the small minority travelling the most and generating the most emissions. We wanted to make sense of this.

Since 2013, I have worked with lots of colleagues around the world to better understand the mechanisms that incentivise travel in academia and the transformative potential of technologies, polices and behaviour change.

My collaborative work on academic mobilities has shown :

• how mobilities are locked in through university recruitment and promotion policy;

• that there are diverse clusters of mobility practices and preferences amongst scholars;

• that scholars experience academic mobilities differently, and these differences are unequal in the advantages they afford, with distinct gendered dimensions; and

• that the design of conferences has vast consequences for transport-related carbon emissions, and intercontinental travel account for 75% of emissions.