Postgraduate research students

Place is the foundation stone of individual and collective life, a geographic location, and the site of lived and felt experiences. However, both our existing attachments to place and our felt experiences of place, defined as the ‘way we feel in and about places and the felt relationships we have to and within place’ are often neglected within place-based policies and practices. Given the focus on an emerging place agenda, through ‘Levelling Up’ across the UK, the ‘Place Principle’ in Scotland and also through regional inequality initiatives internationally such as the ‘Build Back Better Regional Challenge’ in the USA now is a timely moment to consider how best to capture felt experiences in ways that can guide and inform place-based decisions that are more sensitive to, and inclusive of, people’s felt relationships with place. A specific focus within this context is the need to develop new kinds of methods and metrics that can capture the lived and felt experiences of place. This point is expressly acknowledged within local and national rhetoric, see for example, the Technical Annex to the Levelling Up White Paper, where metrics for place-based work including aspects such as pride of place and belonging are considered to be ‘exploratory’ and/or in their ‘infancy’.

The PhD connects with ongoing work within the AHRC Place Programme, led by the first supervisor, Professor Rebecca Madgin, to conceptualise the felt experiences of place and to explore complementary methods and metrics that can secure more place-sensitive policies and practices.

• Professor Rebecca Madgin
• Dr Michael Howcroft
• Professor Joao Porto de Albuquerque

College of Social Sciences (CoSS) PhD Scholarship: 2023-2026

BeNeLux Geography Conference, "Theatre of the Oppressed as Methodology for Surfacing the Felt Experience of Place". Leuven, Belgium, April 2026.

(Invited Talk) Practice as Research Seminar Series. "Theatre of the Oppressed: Reflections and Provocations from an Artist/Researcher". Online, March 2026.

International Creative Research Methods Conference, "Using Theatre of the Oppressed to Capture Felt Experience of Place". Manchester, September 2025.

Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space Spring Academy 2025: Spaces of Valuation and Authenticity, "Using Theatre of the Oppressed to Capture Felt Experience of Place". Erkner, Germany, June 2025.

Inaugural University of Mississippi Jane Austen Conference, "Myopic Miss Jane: Original Short Film". Oxford, MS, May 2022. 

Mississippi Pi Sigma Alpha Regional Conference for Undergraduate Research, "The Case of Santiago de Chile: Pedestrian Deaths, Neo-Liberal Urban Design, and Insufficient Traffic Policy Reform". May 2022.

Mississippi Undergraduate Honors Conference: Back to the Future: Moving Forward with Academic Inquiry, "The Case of Santiago de Chile: Pedestrian Deaths, Neo-Liberal Urban Design, and Insufficient Traffic Policy Reform". March 2022.

Graduate Teaching Assistant - SPP1A Foundations of Welfare & SPP2B Policy, Politics, and Power

Guest Lecturer - URBAN5156 Integrative City Planning Lab & SPP2B Policy, Politics, and Power

Recognising Excellence in Teaching (RET) Associate Fellow

University of the Highlands and Islands Green Freeport Hackathon Winner 2024 for Presentation “Green Freeport: Using Legislative Theatre to Build Bridges and Empower Community Action”