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Julian Brigstocke

Dr Julian Brigstocke

(he/him)

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Media commentator
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Available for postgraduate supervision

Teams and roles for Julian Brigstocke

Overview

I am a Reader in Human Geography. My expertise is broadly in social theory, social & cultural geography, and geohumanities. My research focuses on the spatialities of power, authority, and violence, especially through postcolonial, decolonial, feminist, and posthumanist lenses. I am interested in experimental, embodied, and creative research methods, including experiments with the forms of academic writing. My book Nonauthoritarian Authority: Cities, Materiality, and the Aesthetics of Power will be published by LSE Press, as part of the RGS-IBG monograph series, in early 2026. 

My research is often collaborative, including working with local community groups, activists, and artists. I am currently (2025-2026) working on a Leverhulme-funded project on Informal Authority, Care and Resistance in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro. These interests have been shaped by my involvement with a research collective called the Authority Research Network.

Publication

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

  • Simpson, P. and Brigstocke, J. 2019. Affect. In: Atkinson, P. et al. eds. SAGE Research Methods Foundations.. London: SAGE

2018

2017

  • Brigstocke, J. et al. 2017. Implicit values: uncounted legacies. In: Facer, K. and Pahl, K. eds. Valuing Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research: Beyond Impact. Policy Press, pp. 65-84.

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

Articles

Book sections

Books

Monographs

Websites

Research

Research

I am an interdisciplinary human geographer whose teaching and research focuses on the spatialities of power, authority, and violence, especially the political aesthetics of authority.

Much of my work has focused on trying to conceptualise how we can think, assert, and respond to authority differently and creatively. Authority is a hugely important form of social coordination, one that has been structured through centuries of colonial, patriarchal, and anthropocentric domination. For this reason, rethinking authority requires engaging with ways of challenging the structures, of knowledge, thought, and feeling conventionally associated with European modernity. 

My early research approached these issues from a cultural perspective, exploring the role of urban culture, performance and literature in challenging dominant ways of thinking about authority in the 'city of modernity'. I published this research in my first monograph The Life of the City: Space, Humour, and the Experience of Truth in Fin-de-Siecle Montmartre (2014, Ashgate). 

Subsequently, I have developed a wider-ranging critique of ways of thinking about authority, drawing on posthumanist, feminist, and post-colonial theories to articulate a speculative account of 'non-authoritarian authority'. Non-authoritarian authority is a kind of authority that pluralises our ways of beng in the world, and strives to unlearn the patriarchal and colonial construction of authority that has tied it to aesthetic figures such as the Master, Leader, Father, and Judge. This decade-long project, encompassing empirical research in Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, and Bristol, will be published as an open-access monograph, Nonauthoritarian Authority: Cities, Materiality, and the Aesthetics of Power in early 2026 (LSE Press).

Central to reinventing authority must be the democratization of knowledge through participatory practices that redistribute authority and recognise the wisdom of those speaking from a position of marginality or oppression.  I have been developing these ideas in practice through action research in a community of favelas in Rio de Janeiro, using co-created  embodied research methods to understand everyday life, authority, and violence. This research is currently being written up as a co-authored monograph provisionally titled Creative Body Politics Against the Anti-Black City. 

I originally trained in Philosophy and remain very interested in philosophical debates within and beyond Geography. I am co-editing the Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of History and Philosophy of Geography, to be published in 2027. Philosophically, I am particularly interested in engaging with speculative theory, new materialisms, and the more experimental wings of Critical Theory. 

My research is theory-led and hence empirically quite diverse, including topics such as urban infrastructure, the political ecology of sand extraction and land reclamation, the politics of state violence in informal communities, and creative anarchist urban cultures. This encompasses both historical, archival work and contemporary studies. Theoretically, I engage broadly with non-representational geographies, bringing them into conversation with more overtly politicised theoretical traditions. 

My research has been funded by AHRC, ESRC, Leverhulme, the Newton Fund, and HEFCW. 

Funded Projects

  • Informal Authority, Care and Resistance in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro (£68,147, Leverhulme Fellowship, 2025-2026).

  • Community and Artistic Engagement with Policies to Reduce Armed Violence in the Maré Community of Favelas, Rio de Janeiro (£29,790, HEFCW ODA, 2023–2024)

  • Co-Designing Spaces of Care in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro: An Embodied Approach (£21,673, Global Challenges Research Fund, 2022–2023)

  • What it is to Be There: Exploring grief, place and memory (Co-Applicant, £2000, Brigstow Institute, 2022)

  • Transforming Atmospheric Authority: Experimental Embodiments in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro (£253,000, AHRC, 2020–2023).

  • Urban Humanities Research Network (Co-Applicant, £6134, GW4 Building Communities Programme, 2021–2022)

  • Harena (£3000 creative residency, Leverhulme, 2018)

  • Social Change Through Creativity and Culture, Brazil (Co-Investigator, Newton/AHRC, £280,000, 2016)

  • An Affective Map of Journeys in the Mare Complex of Favelas (Newton, £12,000, 2016)

  • The Museum of Living Exchange (Co-Investigator, Newton, £8000, 2016)

  • Participation's "Others": A Cartography of Creative Listening Practices (AHRC, £55,000, 2014–2015).

  • Starting From Values: Evaluating Intangible Legacies (Co-Investigator, AHRC, £128,000, 2014–2015).

  • Landscapes of Authority (Plymouth University, £3000, 2013–2014)

  • Authority, Knowledge and Performance in Participatory Practice (named researcher, AHRC, £40,000 (2012)

  • Immanent Authority and the Making of Community (named researcher, AHRC, £40,000, 2011)

  • The Life of the City: Aesthetics of Existence in fin-de-siecle Montmartre (ESRC doctoral award, 2006-2010)

Teaching

Teaching

My teaching focuses primarily on geographies of borders, gender, and race, as well as social and cultural geography and social theory more broadly. I am passionate about teaching, and I aim to guide students towards insight and wisdom through creative, problem-based, active learning. 

During 2025 - 2026 I am on research leave, but I usually teaching on the following modules:

  • Border Spaces: Identities, Cultures, and Politics in a Globalizing World (module leader)
  • Critical Geographies of Race and Power
  • Gender, Space and Place
  • Researching Contemporary Issues in Geography: Paris (final year field study visit)
  • Urban Theory Provocations
  • Research Methods
  • Dissertations (undergraduate and postgraduate)

Biography

Qualifications

  • BA (Hons) Philosophy, Bristol University (2003)
  • MSc Society & Space, Bristol University (2006)
  • PhD Human Geography, Bristol University (2011)
  • PGDip Academic Practice, Plymouth University (2014)

 

Professional memberships

Academic positions

  • Reader, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University (2024-present)
  • Senior Lecturer, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University (2020-present)
  • Lecturer, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University (2014 - 2020).
  • Lecturer, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Plymouth University (2012-2014).
  • Research Associate, Warwick University, Department of Sociology (2012)
  • Senior Research Assistant, Northumbria University, Department of Sociology (2012)
  • Research Associate, Newcastle University, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology (2011)
  • Teaching Associate, Newcastle University, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology (2010-2011)
  • Project Editor, Canopus Books (2003-2006)

Committees and reviewing

Administrative and committee roles currently include: 

Supervisions

Supervision

I am available to supervise research students working in one or more of the following areas:

  • Cultural geography, geohumanities, and non-representational geographies
  • Geographies of power, authority, and/or violence
  • Social theory and philosophies in/of Geography
  • Creative or experimental geographical writing or methods
  • Participatory research
  • Informal urbanism (especially Brazil)
  • Gender and race. 

Current supervision

Tirion Jenkins

Tirion Jenkins

Qinyu Feng Feng

Qinyu Feng Feng

Contact Details

Email [email protected]
Telephone +44 29208 76085
Campuses Glamorgan Building, Floor 2, Room 2.91, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WA

Research themes

Specialisms

  • Cultural geography
  • Geohumanities
  • Politics of aesthetics
  • Power and authority
  • Speculative theory
Historical Geographies of Anarchism

Historical Geographies of Anarchism

17 July 2017

External profiles