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Katherine Brickell

Professor Katherine Brickell

Professor of Urban Studies

Research interests

  • Geography
  • Sociology
  • Women
  • Culture

Biography

Professor Katherine Brickell joined the Department of Geography as Professor of Urban Studies in January 2023 and is the research lead of Urban Futures. She was previously Professor of Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. Katherine’s feminist-oriented research on precarious home and working lives crosscuts urban, social, political, development, and legal geography. Her books, which include Home SOS: Gender, Violence and Survival in Crisis Ordinary Cambodia (2020), The Handbook of Displacement (2020), Geographies of Forced Eviction (2017), and Translocal Geographies (2011) reflect this expertise.

She has two decades of research expertise in Cambodia, and is the co-editor of The Handbook of Contemporary Cambodia (2020). Her research specifically on housing also encompasses urban centres of England (London, Greater Manchester) and Ireland (Dublin). Katherine’s current research examines the pressing issues of debt, family homelessness, and temporary accommodation in England. Supported by the Urban Studies Foundation and The British Academy, the research report ‘The Debt Trap’ (with Dr Mel Nowicki) was launched at the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Households in Temporary Accommodation in October 2023.

She is particularly committed to collaborative and engaged research and is co-researcher of the scoping report ‘Geographers and Legal Impact’ (Royal Geographical Society, 2022). Katherine is Editor of the flagship journal Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2023 ongoing) and was previously Editor of Gender, Place and Culture (2017-2023).

In recognition of research excellence, she was conferred the Gill Memorial Award by the Royal Geographical Society (2014) and the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2016). The Times Higher Education (2020) ‘Research Project of the Year: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences’ was awarded to the ‘Blood Bricks’ project she led. Katherine’s monograph Home SOS won the Royal Geographical Society’s Social and Cultural Geography Research Group Prize (2022).

Research

  • Home (un)-making, violence and displacement
  • Labour and climate precarity across the rural-urban divide
  • Debt-financed social reproduction
  • Feminist legal geography and practice

Katherine has led multiple funded grants on these topics with interdisciplinary teams and external partners:

  • (2023-2024, The British Academy) A Feminist Geography of Debt and Housing Precarity
  • (2022-2023, Urban Studies Foundation) Navigating Debt-Trap Urbanism in Pandemic Times: Family Homelessness and Temporary Accommodation in Greater Manchester
  • (2020-2022, UKRI) Social Protection and the Gendered Impacts of COVID-19 in Cambodia: Longitudinal Research to ‘Build Back Better’ in the Global Garment Industry. www.refashionstudy.org
  • (2019-2022, UKRI) Depleted by Debt? Focusing a Gendered Lens on Climate Resilience, Credit, and Nutrition in Translocal Cambodia and South India. https://www.debt-climate-health.org
  • (2017-2019, UKRI) Blood Bricks: Examining the Climate Change-Modern Slavery Nexus in the Cambodian Construction Industry. www.projectbloodbricks.org
  • (2012-2015, UKRI) Lay and Institutional Knowledges of Domestic Violence Law: Towards Active Citizenship in Rural and Urban Cambodia.

Teaching

Undergraduate

  • 6SSG3072 The Right to the City 

Postgraduate

  • 7SSG5209 The Right to the City

PhD supervision

Katherine is interested in supervising postgraduate research at doctoral level and is happy to discuss research topics and funding avenues with prospective students. She is especially interested in the following areas:

  • Feminist geopolitics and feminist political economy
  • Gender-based violence
  • Urban displacement and eviction
  • Geographies of home and homelessness
  • Labour geographies
  • Debt and over-indebtedness
  • Climate precarity and everyday life
  • Legal geography and practice
  • Development in Southeast Asia

Further details

See Katherine's research profile

    Research

    DID_Urban_Development_HERO
    Urban Futures research group

    Examining urban futures through a conceptual, analytical and methodological lens that questions what cities are and how they work.

    News

    Homeless families stuck in a debt trap, says report

    Launched in UK Parliament, report shows how debt both causes, and prolongs, homelessness for many families

    Pile of bills sitting on a stair

    New study finds that microfinance is exacerbating climate precarity and harm in Cambodia

    The paper, co-authored by King’s academics, critically examines green finance and ways microfinance contributes to climate precarity and harm for farmers in...

    A woman in a rural village in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, tends her field of Cassava plants.

    “Outstanding” geographer recognised for research on women's experiences of precarious housing

    Professor Katherine Brickell has received a mid-career fellowship from the British Academy, as recognition for her advances in her subject area.

    high rise flats

    Geographers help shape laws around environment, social justice and human rights

    New report spotlights the work geographers do as expert witnesses, legal consultants and advocates for marginalised communities.

    A gavel lying on a world map with Africa, Europe and Asia visible

    Features

    'Places without postcards' highlights impact of climate change around the world

    The Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy has created a collection of ‘postcards’ from key places around the globe that tell an important story around...

    places without postcards banner montage incl text 1903 558

      Research

      DID_Urban_Development_HERO
      Urban Futures research group

      Examining urban futures through a conceptual, analytical and methodological lens that questions what cities are and how they work.

      News

      Homeless families stuck in a debt trap, says report

      Launched in UK Parliament, report shows how debt both causes, and prolongs, homelessness for many families

      Pile of bills sitting on a stair

      New study finds that microfinance is exacerbating climate precarity and harm in Cambodia

      The paper, co-authored by King’s academics, critically examines green finance and ways microfinance contributes to climate precarity and harm for farmers in...

      A woman in a rural village in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, tends her field of Cassava plants.

      “Outstanding” geographer recognised for research on women's experiences of precarious housing

      Professor Katherine Brickell has received a mid-career fellowship from the British Academy, as recognition for her advances in her subject area.

      high rise flats

      Geographers help shape laws around environment, social justice and human rights

      New report spotlights the work geographers do as expert witnesses, legal consultants and advocates for marginalised communities.

      A gavel lying on a world map with Africa, Europe and Asia visible

      Features

      'Places without postcards' highlights impact of climate change around the world

      The Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy has created a collection of ‘postcards’ from key places around the globe that tell an important story around...

      places without postcards banner montage incl text 1903 558