David Featherstone

Biography

I studied for a BA in Geography at Cambridge University between 1993 and 1996. I then volunteered with the land rights campaign The Land is Ours before embarking on a PhD. Between 1997 and 2001 I worked on my thesis, ‘Spatiality, Political Identities and the Environmentalism of the Poor’, with Doreen Massey and Steve Hinchliffe in the Department of Geography, at the Open University. I stayed there a further year as a research fellow working on a project on the London Port Strikes of 1768. I lectured in Human Geography at the University of Liverpool between 2003 and January 2009 and from February 2009 have been a lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Glasgow.  

Research Interest

I have contributed to debates on the political geographies of globalization and on the relations between resistance, space and politics. My work has also developed core concerns with subaltern political ecologies and the formation of transnational solidarity networks. It has challenged existing understandings of the relations between space, politics and resistance through developing an account of networked forms of resistance and political activity. These arguments have been developed through detailed empirical work in a range of contexts. My book Resistance, Space and Political Identities: The Making of Counter-Global Networks is a sustained attempt to theorize resistance and political identities through utilising a relational approach to space. It draws on detailed empirical research on networked struggles in both the 18th-century Atlantic world and contemporary counter-globalisation movement. The book foregrounds the solidarities and geographies of connection between different place-based struggles and argues that such solidarities are essential to produce more plural and equal forms of globalization. A core concern of my current research is with the histories and geographies of solidarity and internationalism. This work has three key parts. This will be published in a book project Solidarity! Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism which will be published by Zed Books. Firstly, I am concerned with the theoretical, intellectual, and political genealogies of internationalism. This work involves an ongoing engagement with a number of theorists and political figures including C.L.R. James and Antonio Gramsci. Secondly, I am working on the political geographies of pan-Africanism and other forms of black internationalist politics. I am concerned with how these forms of black internationalism re-configure existing understandings of the spatial politics of anti-fascism. This work is funded by a British Academy Small Grant 'Black Internationalism and the Spatial Politics of Anti-Fascism'. Thirdly, I am interested in forms of solidarity and contestation constructed in the context of the current economic crisis. This will focus on exploring the tensions, possibilities and practices of solidarity at a time of global economic crisis. This work will be based on research with trade union and social movement networks.