Research Team
Dr. Debbie Hopkins, Principal Investigator
Debbie is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford. Her research is broadly concerned with the social dimensions of climate change, socio-technical transitions, and the mobility of people, goods and 'waste', with a focus on cities and processes of urbanisation. Debbie examines the various ways that labour is (made) mobile, and is concerned with the politics, practices and lived experiences of workers as they are (made) mobile. Her ongoing empirical work engages with academic workers (in their various roles), and freight drivers (including 'truckers' and delivery drivers).
Dr. AC Davidson, Co-Investigator
AC Davidson is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography in the Department of Biological and Geographical Sciences at the University of Huddersfield. Their research centers on the intersections of social justice and sustainability, with a particular focus on critical theory and feminist geographies. AC has worked on individual and collaborative research projects relating to sustainable consumption, car sharing, freight and automation and parenting and urban mobility. More broadly, their research interests are in feminist and queer theory on body-environment relations and methodological questions on the ethics, aesthetics and politics of knowledge production.
Prof. Al James, Co-Investigator
Al is a Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Newcastle. Al's work sees the making of capitalism through the eyes of workers rather than simply firms and capital (labour geography); exposes the masculinist limits of ‘universal’ economic theory through new engagements with women and gendered social reproduction (feminist economic geography); and engages with organisations working to improve the lives of workers and their families (economic geography outreach).
Prof. Nicky Gregson, Co-Investigator
Nicky Gregson is Emerita Professor in the Department of Geography, Durham University. Although most of her more recent research has concerned consumption, waste and their interface with economies, she has long standing interests in labour and work. They go back to her PhD research on the emergence of agrarian capitalism in NW England and her research on waged domestic labour in England, which is to be found in the book Servicing the Middle Classes (1994). More recently, she has published widely on logistics at work – focusing particularly on truck driving work within supply chain capitalism.
Dr. Kaveri Medappa, Postdoctoral Researcher
Kaveri is a postdoctoral researcher in human geography at the University of Oxford. She received her PhD in International Development from the University of Sussex (2018-2022) for her ethnographic study of app-based food delivery workers and cab drivers in Bangalore, India. Kaveri’s research interests include interrogating the politics of development, urban transformations, critical mobilities research, labour ethnography, everyday lives and their intersections with finance capital and digital technologies, and people’s movements.