Vital Geographies

Research in this group explores the production, politics and governance of different forms of life.

In the context of the challenges faced in the Anthropocene, the research examines the relationships between human and non-human agencies, broadly conceptualised to include, for example, plants and animals, disease vectors, environments and natural hazards.

It asks how different forms of agency are conceptualised, produced, differentially positioned, regulated, and intervened in, and explores the nature of outcomes from these processes. It investigates the processes that make life, its nature and quality, and those that attenuate that life.

Current interests include geographies of agriculture, food and nutrition; demography, health and wellbeing; animal geographies; and political ecologies and conservation.

Drawing on approaches from quantitative as well as qualitative social science, and, amongst others, from critical political economy, feminist, and poststructuralist approaches (including postcolonial and posthumanist traditions), a shared priority is to make reflective contributions that promote lives that are good and flourishing across the globe.

Themes

	Geographies of agriculture, food and nutrition This sub-theme explores the practices and politics of food production, distribution and consumption and their significance for human wellbeing across different periods and geographical contexts. Interests include questions of food shortage and food security, the nature and significance of indigenous, smallholder or livestock production systems, food and forest relations, and old and new transformations to food production including, for example, the social and ecological impacts of large-scale land acquisitions, new cultures of food, the design and roll-out of cutting-edge agro-technologies, the fostering and incubation of new attachments and embodied relations between people and land, and political processes involved in the making of various Green Revolutions. A shared concern is with understanding agriculture, food and nutrition as implicated in wider political processes related to land or subjects and their uneven outcomes.
	Demography, health and wellbeing Research in this sub-theme investigates the spatial, social and temporal differentials in migration, fertility, mortality, health and wellbeing. The influences we consider include individuals' characteristics as well as local, regional and national factors such as the physical environment, health services, institutions, and the influence of culture on behaviour. Our research ranges from the historical demography of medieval and early modern Britain, through substantial work on the late nineteenth century, to obesity in present-day London and early marriage in Nepal. We have a strong focus on demographic, statistical and GIS techniques, but qualitative methods are also important including archival, textual, and interview research.
	Animal geographies The animal geographies research concerns the relations between humans and non-human animals. We call into questions the conventional place of animals in cultural and geographical studies and push towards manner of study in which the supposed contrast between human and beast is undermined. We seek to reconstruct animal geographies as heterogeneously constituted by complex networks and assemblages of agents and actors, both human and not. We explore this more complicated relationship where animals can be placed along a broad range between nature and culture in various geographical locations and historical settings.
	Political ecologies and conservation Research in this area centres around the various politics - material and symbolic - of socially constructed natures. While the technologies and epistemic concerns of conservation science are a key interest, the group covers a broad set of geographies, fields, sites, and theoretical approaches. Research within the group draws on historical and contemporary accounts, as well as engaging with new materials and texts, such as digital media. Many group members are active in the Cambridge Conservation Initiative and contribute to policy and practice outside of the university.

The Vital Geographies group has strong links to the Political Ecology group in the Department of Geography, the Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, the Cambridge Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre and the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure; Vital Geography members are also often members of these networks/groups.

Group members

Professor Bill Adams	The political ecology of socially constructed natures
Dr Evangelia Apostolopoulou	Political ecology, neoliberal conservation, production of nature and space, Marxist political economy
Dr Maan Barua	Spatialities, politics and governance of the living and material world
Professor Tim Bayliss-Smith	Agroforestry, intensification and social institutions in Melanesia.
Dr Rachel Carmenta	Research description to follow.
Dr Romola Davenport	The urban mortality transition in north-west Europe in the period 1700-1850, including the geography of smallpox epidemics in Britain before vaccination.
Dr Joseph Day	Identifying the causes of the heterogeneity of demographic experience observed among proto-industrial populations.
Professor Matthew Gandy	Landscape, urban bio-diversity, infrastructure, and modernity, including corporeal and sensory geographies.
Dr Philip Howell	The cultural and historical geography of prostitution, gender and sexuality in Victorian Britain and its empire; changing animal geographies.
Dr Hannaliis Jaadla	Research description to follow.
Dr Eszter Kovàcs	Political ecology of agriculture, water and mobility
Professor Nigel Leader-Williams	Conservation policy and human-animal conflicts
Dr Akanksha Marphatia	Predictors and consequences of variability in secondary educational attainment in rural India: a life course approach
Dr Piero Montebruno	Research description to follow.
Dr Francesca Moore	Historical-political geographer with research interests in population politics, the regulation of reproduction and public health.
Dr David Nally	Geographical dimensions of colonisation, the geopolitics of subsistence crises, and the politics of famine relief measures, for example the Irish Famine; the politics of global food provisioning
Gill Newton	Mortality and disease transmission in urban Britain, especially London, in the sixteenth to nineteenth century.
Yuan Pan	Incorporating biodiversity into Natural Capital accounting, by using ecological and economical approaches.
Dr Olga Petri Convenor	Research description to follow.
Dr Alice Reid	Infant, child and maternal mortality in British populations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, including the role of doctors and midwifery.
Dr Chris Sandbrook	Political ecology; market-based conservation; role of evidence in conservation
Dr Max Satchell	Historical geography, occupational structure and transport networks using GIS, and leprosy in Britain since c.1000.
Dr Ivan Scales	Political ecology of resource use and environmental change
Dr Judith Schleicher	Exploring the relationships between the environment and human wellbeing and poverty
Dr Harry Smith	Research description to follow.
Professor Richard Smith	Welfare and demography in England c. 1300-1834, the geography of poor relief, and a re-assessment of the Mortality Revolution and Epidemiological Transition models for England, western Europe and Asia.
Dr Carry van Lieshout	Research description to follow.
Professor Bhaskar Vira	Political economy of natural resources, ecosystem services and development. Has a particular focus on political economy and institutional change in contemporary India. He studies justices and injustices that result from economic change, including India's new service economy, and changes in land use and land ownership.
Dr Liz Watson Convenor	Livelihoods and socio-economic/environmental transformations in the drylands of eastern Africa.

Graduate students

The following graduate students are also associated with the group:

Tina Andersson	Livelihoods, ecosystem services and conservation in a tropical CM-SES setting
Clare Elizabeth Bissell	The Political Ecology of Trees and Birds in Ghana: People, power and perspectives driving landscape change in Kwahu East.
Adam Bobbette	Mediums, Controversy, Knowledge: Living on a Volcano
Lander Bosch	On shape and being shaped: the relation between overweight and obesity in London's schoolchildren and the energy-expending characteristics of their built environment
Peadar Brehony	Socio-ecological systems and drought in East Africa
Josephine Chambers	Investigating the impacts of market-based agricultural interventions for biodiversity conservation
Han Cheng	Politics of knowledge construction in China's international development cooperation.
Peter Damerell	Coexisting with large carnivores: understanding how perceptions of risk and vulnerability pertain to rewilding in Europe
Lucy Goodman	Large scale water-management infrastructure in Central and South Asia - to what extent have policies been based on flawed or incomplete economic analysis driven environmental
Annette Green	A political ecology of conservation and development corridors in Kilombero Valley, Tanzania
Jonathan Hanson	Snowleopards and sustainability: participatory conservation and development in the annapurna region of Nepal
Katy Jeary	Land sparing and its impact on local forest biodiversity, local land users and their food security
Edward Kiely	Research description to follow.
Marcus Nyman Convenor	Foraging in the city’s margins: understanding urban nature through food gathering practices in London
Tobias Nyumba	Flagships or Battleships? Understanding "Hidden" Aspects of Human Elephant Interactions and their Impacts on Human Wellbeing in Trans Mara District, Kenya.
Francisco Oliveira Filho	A new paradigm for the Brazilian Amazon: environmental law enforcement, land use dynamics and the rural environmental registry (CAR)
Mathilda Rosengren	Wastelands of difference? Urban nature and more-than-human difference in Berlin and Gothenburg
Morgan Seag	Equal Opportunities on Ice: Gendered institutional change in 20th century Antarctic science
Adam Searle	Celia's ghost: Liminality and authenticity in de/extinction.
Anca Serban	Decoding the goverance of nature in the world's largest protected area network
Saba Sharma	The state and ethnic violence in Assam, India
Sipke Shaughnessy	The politics of conservation, identities and livelihoods in Mukogodo Forest, Kenya
Trishant Simlai	The political ecology of conservation militarisation in India: Social and political implications of using surveillance technologies for conservation
Emma Tait	Research description to follow.
Yifu Wang	Identifying conservation solution in data-poor environments - the Yangtze finless porpoise as a conservation case study (an advertised project)
Karen Wong-Pérez	Understanding the links between the Natural Environment and local perceptions of Poverty, Human Well-being and Environmental fairness in San Felipe, Yucatan, Mexico.