Research Interests

Urban Metabolism

The theme of “urban metabolism” has involved research into the development of sanitation, water supply and urban environmental politics in Britain, France, Germany, India, Nigeria and the United States.

This research has been funded by a variety of sources including the British Academy, the ESRC, the Graham Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Publications include papers in Antipode, City, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and Transactions.

The principal outcome of the first phase of this work is the book Concrete and clay: reworking nature in New York City (The MIT Press, 2002) which examines five interrelated aspects to New York's urban environment: the building of a modern water supply system; the creation and meaning of public space; the construction of landscaped roads; the grassroots environmental politics of the ghetto; and the contemporary politics of pollution.

My research into urbanization and public health has also been developed through collaborative work on the global resurgence of tuberculosis and infectious disease. This has produced a series of papers and an edited book The return of the White Plague: global poverty and the 'new' tuberculosis (Verso, 2003) which includes contributions by leading geographers, anthropologists, demographers, biologists and other disciplines drawn from the UK, the USA, France, Denmark, Sweden, South Africa, Zambia and Malawi.

The current phase of my urban environmental research is focused on cultural histories of water and urban infrastructure under an ESRC funded fellowship entitled Cyborg urbanization: theorizing water and urban infrastructure which incorporates insights gained from recent fieldwork in Berlin, Lagos, Los Angeles and Mumbai.

Cinematic Landscapes

This strand of work has involved a close engagement with developments in film studies, art history, literary theory and related disciplines. Research has explored the ideological dimensions to representations of landscape through a series of critical essays on the work of Todd Haynes, Werner Herzog, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter. Publications include papers in Ecumene, Society and Space, Annals of the Association of American Geographers and Transactions. I am currently exploring urban landscapes in the films of Michelangelo Antonioni and cinematic depictions of urban nature in Weimar Berlin.

^{On the set of Zabriskie Point. (1970)
Michelangelo Antonioni in Death Valley, California.
Photo: Courtesy of the British Film Institute, London.}