Rachael Squire

Promotional image for Oli Mould's book 'Postcapitalist cities' published by Manchester University Press. The book sits against the background of an empty gravel path and blue sky. Text reads: What could a city look like after capitalism?

Promotional image for Oli Mould's book 'Postcapitalist cities' published by Manchester University Press. The book sits against the background of an empty gravel path and blue sky. Review quote reads: 'Truly global and deeply humane... Oli Mould proposes a radical urbanism that draws on past, present and future visions that could reshape the world.'

Promotional image for Oli Mould's book 'Postcapitalist cities' published by Manchester University Press. Gravel background with blue sky. Review quote reads: 'A much needed antidote to the daily escalation of urban authoritarianism and the existential threat of planetary destruction.'

Publishing today!🏙️

In a world of environmental degradation, inequality and social strife, a vision for what comes next is vital.

@olimould.bsky.social takes readers from strikes in Santiago to urban commoning and Solarpunk, revealing how communities are making a new kind of city possible.

The UK universities cutting geography have lost their bearings From climate change to geopolitics, the knowledge, skills and insights of geographers have never been more relevant, say five professors

Our new piece out today in Times Higher Education about the threats to Geography in the UK - particularly fieldwork - please do share. It links to a recent snapshot survey on the challenges being faced in UK HE, which highlights the inequities of the challenges, but also fears of what is yet to come

Image of the De Gruyter Handbook of Feminist Political Geography

It's arrived! And what a brilliant text. Huge congrats to @cordyf.bsky.social and Sydney Calkin for bringing this together.

Beyond the missile and military: towards colourful Cold War histories Emerging from an AHRC funded project on Materialising the Cold War, Cold War Museology (Douthwaite, J., Nehring, H., & Alberti, S. J. (Eds.) (2025). Cold War museology. Taylor & Francis) and Cold W...

'Cold War Museology' and 'Cold War Scotland' are wonderful and important books. A pleasure to review them here:

Beyond the missile and military: towards colourful Cold War histories

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Cover of the booklet, based on the open access science paper

A page, showing visual/verbal language that interplay cleverly. The style is B&W line drawings, creating dense but very clear layouts

The theory and the images speak to each other on each page

Just the sweetest line drawing of a father seahorse parenting his little fry

How about immersing yourself in this truly remarkable, clever & visually stunning piece of work by @sagebrice.bsky.social?
She has crafted a superb call for the liberatory promise of queer/trans ecological sensibilities for critical social science, using comics.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Fixed-term academic contracts discourage ‘radical’ research The rise of fixed-term academic contracts means researchers are likely to play it safe in their choice of research topics, eschewing the kind of ambitious, radical discovery European policymakers want...

💡Our @statesofprecarity.bsky.social project has been covered in
@sciencebusiness.net. 'Fixed-term academic contracts discourage ‘radical’ research' sciencebusiness.net/news/r-d-fun... Thank you @davidmjourno.bsky.social for reaching out to the team

Thanks @julietterowsell.bsky.social for covering the @statesofprecarity.bsky.social report launch event this week!

This session aims to bring environmental justice praxis into conversations around queer and trans liberation and subjugation. Anti-gender politics and the transnational eliminationist movements against trans and gender diverse people (Holvikivi et al. 2024) are increasingly affecting environmental policy and advocacy, and gender has become hotly contested in global environmental governance processes (Balayannis 2026). In response, this session asks: how do queer and trans liberation matter for environmental justice? The exclusion and regulation of trans and queer bodies from and within public spaces is now routinely making headlines in the UK and well beyond (Butler 2025; Faye 2022). Meanwhile, the environmental sciences also have a long history of eco-normativity and structurally pathologising queer lives; often characterising transness, intersex bodies, and same-sex sexual behaviours, as the adverse effects of pollution exposure (Di Chiro 2010; Zabalegui 2024). Despite its focus on power and difference (Schlosberg et al. 2025), environmental justice praxis has yet to address these enduring epistemic harms and (up until recently) has lacked engagement with queer and trans politics. Recent calls to queer environmental justice are configured as an “inclusion” issue (e.g. Goldsmith and Bell 2022), and overlook the more fundamental structural harms of dominant science (Liboiron 2021). Geographical research has tended to reinforce the boundaries between environmental politics, and queer and trans politics, suggesting that existing work in queer and trans geographies holds limited relevance for expanding on environmental justice. This session confronts this assumption and considers the potentialities of queer and trans studies, beyond making sense of gender, sexuality, and heteronormativity. [continued on next image]

Organisers Angeliki Balayannis (Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands), Jay Todd (University of Glasgow, UK) Abstracts are limited to 300 words. If you would like to discuss your submission please email Angeliki Balayannis (angeliki.balayannis@wur.nl) and Jay Todd (jay.todd@glasgow.ac.uk) Butler, Judith. 2025. Who’s Afraid of Gender? Penguin Books. Chen, Mel Y. 2012. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Duke University Press Books. Di Chiro, Giovanna. 2010. “Polluted Politics Confronting Toxic Dis-Course, Sex Panic, and Eco-Normativity.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Carolina Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Ericson. Indiana University Press. Faye, Shon. 2022. The Transgender Issue. Penguin Books. Goldsmith, Leo, and Michelle L. Bell. 2022. “Queering Environmental Justice: Unequal Environmental Health Burden on the LGBTQ+ Community.” American Journal of Public Health 112 (1): 79–87. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306406. Holvikivi, Aiko, Billy Holzberg, and Tomas Ojeda, eds. 2024. Transnational Anti-Gender Politics: Feminist Solidarity in Times of Global Attacks. Palgrave MacMillan. Liboiron, Max. 2021. Pollution Is Colonialism. Duke University Press. Schlosberg, David, Lauren Rickards, Rebecca Pearse, Hannah Della Bosca, and Oli Moraes. 2025. “Critical Environmental Justice in Contemporary Scholarship and Movements: Consensus and Plurality of the Discourse.” Environmental Politics 34 (3): 399–420. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2024.2362573. Shadaan, Reena, and Michelle Murphy. 2020. “EDC’s as Industrial Chemicals and Settler Colonial Structures: Towards a Decolonial Feminist Approach.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 6 (1): 1. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v6i1.32089. Zabalegui, Maite Arraiza. 2024. “The Tale of EDCs and Trans Identities.” Diogenes 65 (1): 110–30. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0392192123000287.

🔉Call for Papers! This September Jay Todd @jaytoddgla.bsky.social & I will be organising a session on "Queering Environmental Justice" at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference @rgsibg.bsky.social

⏰ Abstract deadline: 18 February 2026
🔗 Conference website: www.rgs.org/research/ann...

Thank you @matildaf.bsky.social for your fantastic and considered response. And all your work more broadly in this area - we're really grateful.

Thanks so much for sharing.

Precarity in UK #Geography is pernicious. Fixed term contracts are a scourge & even those on permanent contracts do not feel safe in their jobs

This landmark study provides Action Plans for reducing precarity. We need to also raise awareness & lobby for change #geosky

www.rgs.org/research/hig...

Image showing pictures of four discussants - Dr Olalekan Adekola, Dr Matilda Fitzmaurice, Prof Gillian Rose, Dr Jay Todd

It's not too late to join us for the launch of the States of Precarity report and resources at 1pm (UK time) today! We'll be joined by four amazing discussants, with lots of opportunities for wider questions too. You can sign up here: www.rgs.org/events/upcom...

Grateful to amazing colleagues who have kindly agreed to respond to the report. Please do join us if you can :)

Thank you @stuartelden.bsky.social for launching the debate! 🥳
Other pieces in the forum coming out shortly include an intro by Giada Peterle, a piece by @squirerachael.bsky.social, one by @klausdodds.bsky.social
and a drawn response by me — that, incidentally, I still have to finish drawing 🤣😉!

We'll be joined by amazing respondents from different career stages who'll be offering critical reflections on the report its findings. Fruther details soon but please do save the date and register if you can.

Thank you for sharing and for your ongoing support!

this is a crucial report with significance across the UK #highered sector, for all workers, on fixed-tem contracts or not, including senior management. @rgsibg.bsky.social @rgs-ibghe.bsky.social @britishacademy.bsky.social @timeshighered.bsky.social @resprofnews.bsky.social

States of precarity in UK Higher Education geography Findings from a discipline-focused research project exploring the lived realities of precarious academic work within UK Higher Education geography.

Good to see findings from this timely & necessary research coming out. Hope there are tangible actions following the findings and this is not simply another citable reference that can be used to document and tick-box
States of precarity in UK Higher Education geography
www.rgs.org/research/hig...

Thanks so much for reading and sharing.

A sign in an aquarium with an arrow point right and the words 'swim this way'.

A tunnel in an aquarium surrounded by water with people looking out into the water

A new paper in Mobilities by Kim Peters and I - Routes to blue stewardship? Mobilising aquarium a/effects towards ocean citizenship and planetary change

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Original wheel here and new 'spoke' below. We argue that contract status needs to be included.

Over half of colleagues on fixed-term contracts cannot plan for their future. A further 37.6% say FTCs limit their ability to plan.
#StatesOfPrecarity

If anyone missed the launch event last week for our guidance on more inclusive workplaces for academics with ELC, the recording is now available on our website (along with the guidance) exhaustioneconomy.uk/guidance/ @alisonallam.bsky.social @catherinehale.bsky.social @equihealthfutures.bsky.social

Yes - we were inspired by your paper. We cite it in the report and will be engaging with it in forthcoming publications too.

States of precarity in UK Higher Education geography Findings from a discipline-focused research project exploring the lived realities of precarious academic work within UK Higher Education geography.

Precarity is not a niche issue.

One-third of academic Geographers in the UK are on fixed-term contracts.

Our report shows the profound personal, professional, and disciplinary impacts of this. #StatesofPrecarity

Full report: www.rgs.org/research/hig...

Worth bearing in mind here that we conducted the survey two years ago - much has changed and as the report acknowledges, the figure is now likely much higher.

Read more here: www.rgs.org/research/hig...

Precarity is often presented as something that only effects early career researchers or people on fixed term contracts.

Our report found that 45% of geographers on permanent contracts feel precarious.

The implications for the discipline are wide ranging. Read more 👇
www.rgs.org/research/hig...

This was fantastic and incredibly informative. Thank you @drbevans.bsky.social and team for this work. I will be downlaoding , reflecting, and sharing the guidance with my HoD: exhaustioneconomy.uk/guidance/

States of precarity in UK Higher Education geography Findings from a discipline-focused research project exploring the lived realities of precarious academic work within UK Higher Education geography.

Report here: www.rgs.org/research/hig...

States of precarity in UK geography report launch We're invitomh all geographers to the launch of the States of Precarity in UK Higher Education Geography report.

Today, we’re starting a countdown to the launch event for our States of Precarity in UK HE Geography report. Based on 364 responses from across the discipline, it maps how precarity is shaping academic lives. #StatesofPrecarity

Follow along as we share the findings week by week.

Register below👉