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Ms Coco Huggins

PhD student

Biography

Coco is a socioeconomic and political geographer with a focus on the nature of work and welfare provision in the Global North. Her main research expertise is UK benefit policy, particularly Universal Credit and reforms to working-age benefits over the past 15 years. She was seconded to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in 2023 on a research placement and has lectured on a variety of issues including precarious work, theories of social reproduction, austerity and benefit policy. Her research often intersects with cultural geographies, exploring the interactions between media, literature, film and contemporary sociopolitical discourse in the UK. She has a particular interest in the role of Charles Dickens’s work in the production of popular imaginaries of Victorian poverty and society more broadly. As a practising Christian, she is also interested in how faith influences social policy. Her main research is centred on British benefit reform, although she is currently interested in the regional effects of LASPO and shifting geographies of local government funding, particularly in the North West.

Career

  • 2021-present: PhD in Geography, University of Cambridge (ESRC Funded)
  • 2023: Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
  • 2020-2021: MPhil in Geographical Research, University of Cambridge.
    • Thesis title: “Dickensian Neoliberalism? Exploring a Dickensian Discourse of UK Work and Welfare from 2010 to 2020
  • 2016-2019: BA (Hons) Geography, Durham University
    • Final Year Dissertation: “Constructing the Geographical Imagination: The Dickensian as a Discourse” (Ranked top of cohort scoring 94%)

Qualifications

  • MPhil in Geographical Research, University of Cambridge
  • BA (Hons) Geography, Durham University (First Class)

Funding and awards

  • Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 1 + 3 Doctoral Training Partnership Studentship (2020- present)
  • Searle Reading Prize, Pembroke College, Cambridge (2022)
  • Robin Mills Prize, Durham University (Highest BA Geography Degree/ Second Highest Overall Degree in Undergraduate Geography) (2019)
  • Nominee for the Royal Geographical Society’s (RGS) Historical Research Group Dissertation Award (2019)
  • Runner-Up Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Bacon Politics, Economics and International Relations Essay Competition (2015)
  • Highly Commended, RGS Young Geographer of the Year (2013)
  • Winner, RGS Young Geographer of the Year (2012)

Research

Her PhD research focuses on reforms to the UK benefit system from 2010 to the present, with a particular emphasis on the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016. It seeks to map attitudes towards policy across the party political spectrum and deconstruct the morals, values and ideologies embedded within these attitudes, as well as those of the legislation itself and broader public discourse around reforms. With a focus on qualitative methods, it involves in-depth interviews with policymakers, including MPs, peers and civil servants, and analysis of policy documents. 

Her previous work examined the discourse of “the Dickensian” as a specific distillation of Charles Dickens’s work and “the Victorian” in general, illustrating how it may be used as a lens to analyse the emotional geographies and atmosphere of austerity.

Publications

Articles

  • “Constructing the Geographical Imagination: The Dickensian as a Discourse” [under peer review]

Conference presentations

  • “Welfare or Workfare? Exploring A Dickensian Discourse of UK Benefit Policy Reform from 2010 to 2020” British Sociological Association Annual Conference, University of Manchester, April 2023
  • “This House Believes New Labour Saved Britain” (Debate Speaker) The Cambridge Union, November 2022
  • “The Human(e) Geographer: Emotions, Ethics and Philosophy in Research Practice” RGS-IBG Postgraduate Forum Mid-Term Conference, Online, April 2022
  • “Geographers As Culture Vultures” Geographical Association Annual Conference, University of Surrey, April 2022

Teaching

University of Cambridge Geography Tripos

  • Undergraduate Supervisor (2022- present):
    • Part 1A: Economic Globalisation and Its Crises
    • Part 1B: Inequality
    • Part 2: Work and Employment
  • Lecturing (2023- present):
    • Part 1B: Inequality
      • ‘Strivers or Skivers? Constructing the Neoliberal Benefit Claimant’
      • ‘Social Reproduction, Women & Welfare’
    • Part 2: Work & Employment
      • ‘Understanding Precarious Work and Welfare in the Global North’
  • Lecturer at the Sutton Trust Summer School, University of Cambridge, August 2022

External activities

  • Geography Postgraduate Teaching Committee, Postgraduate Student Committee (2023-4)
  • Secretary, Royal Geographical Society (RGS) Postgraduate Forum (2022-23)
  • Gonville & Caius Explore Caius Outreach Programme (2023)
  • RGS Associate Fellow (2022- Present)
  • Disabilities Officer, Graduate Parlour Committee (GPC), Pembroke College Cambridge (2021- 22)
  • External Co-President, Cambridge University Refugee Scholarship Campaign (2021-22)
  • Chapel Warden, Pembroke College Cambridge (2020-Present)
  • President, GPC, Pembroke College Cambridge (2020-2021)
  • Student Member, Geography Departmental Lecturer Recruitment Panel, Durham University (2018)