I grew up in Scunthorpe and live in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. I'm a political geographer at Newcastle University and also Minister of Wallsend Baptist Church.
Political geography is the study of how we divide the world up between ourselves: how and why we draw borders between each other, and how we think about the world geopolitically as divided between certain types of people and places. It looks at what happens as a result.
It is also the study of what we can do to overcome those divisions and make a more peaceful world.
My writing explores this. It draws on political geography and international relations theory, on theology and on philosophy. I'm particularly interested in what it means to treat people as proper human beings in a variety of locations, including international borders. My work is informed by field research around the world, particularly along the Uzbek-Kyrgyz and German-Danish borderlands. I have also conducted field research in Israel-Palestine and Turkey, and on human value and the workplace in the UK.
I use this work to think about some of the big questions we face as human beings - questions about meaning, purpose, value, suffering, death, religion and how to live life well.
