Dr Jonathan Prior

(he/him)

PhD

Publication

• Date
• Type

Research

I am primarily driven by an interest in the relationship between society and nature. I take an interdisciplinary approach through my research, spanning cultural geography, sound studies, environmental philosophy, geohumanities, and landscape research. My research can be clustered into the following two themes:

     Sonic geographies

I am currently principal investigator on a three-year project titled ‘Networked through Sound: Listening to 20th Century Wildlife Sound Archives’, funded by the AHRC-DFG Funding Initiative in the Humanities (2025-28). In collaboration with the German geographer Prof. Sandra Jasper (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), this project investigates the histories and contemporary relevance of a network of wildlife sound archives initiated in the mid 20th century in Europe and South Africa.

This follows on from a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust (2023-24) funded project, titled ‘Listening to the archive: A cross-cultural analysis of European wildlife sound archives, 1950 to the present’, which focused on the production and consumption of wildlife sound recordings held at the two largest wildlife sound archives in Europe: The British Library’s Wildlife and Environmental Sounds collection in London, and the Animal Sound Archive in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. This has led to two publications: a book chapter on digital wildlife sound recordings, and a forthcoming journal article co-authored with Prof. Sandra Jasper on the history of wildlife sound recording at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

Within this theme, I have also published extensively on the intersections between sound and geography, and phonographic methods (listening, soundwalking, audio recording) for geographical and broader social science and arts research. These include the following publications:

• Hunter, H., Jasper, S. and Prior, J. 2024. Digital sonic ecologies: Encountering the non-human through digital sound recordings. In: Turnbull, J. et al. eds. Digital Ecologies: Mediating More-Than-Human Worlds. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 50-69.
• Bates, V., Hickman, C., Manchester, H., Prior, J. and Singer, S. 2020. Beyond landscape’s visible realm: Recorded sound, nature, and wellbeing. Health and Place 61, article number: 102271. (10.1016/j.healthplace.2019.102271)
• Prior, J., Gallagher, M., Needham, M. and Holmes, R. 2017. Listening differently: a pedagogy for expanded listening. British Educational Research Journal 43(6), pp. 1246-1265. (10.1002/berj.3306) 
• Gallagher, M., Kanngieser, A. and Prior, J. 2017. Listening geographies: Landscape, affect and geotechnologies. Progress in Human Geography 41(5), pp. 618-637. (10.1177/0309132516652952) 
• Prior, J. 2017. Sonic methods in geography. Oxford Bibliographies (10.1093/obo/9780199874002-0172) 
• Gallagher, M. and Prior, J. 2017. Listening walks: a method of multiplicity. In: Bates, C. and Rhys-Taylor, A. eds. Walking Through Social Research. Routledge Advances in Research Methods London: Routledge
• Prior, J. 2017. Sonic environmental aesthetics and landscape research. Landscape Research 42(1), pp. 6-17. (10.1080/01426397.2016.1243235)
• Prior, J. and Walton, S. 2017. The Bristol and Bath railway path: an ecopoetic sound collaboration. GeoHumanities 3(1), pp. 246-249. (10.1080/2373566X.2016.1273076)
• Gallagher, M. and Prior, J. 2014. Sonic geographies: Exploring phonographic methods. Progress in Human Geography 38(2), pp. 267-284. (10.1177/0309132513481014

     Environmental values, restoration, and rewilding

     Through this theme, I have studied the relationship between environmental values and the production of environmental policies, as a means to understand what motivates and underpins different ways of conceptualising the more-than-human world (animals, plants, ecological processes) when humans seek to implement ecological restoration, rewilding, or environmental management strategies. My first book, Between Nature and Culture: The Aesthetics of Modified Environments, co-authored with Emily Brady and Isis Brook, was published in 2018 by Rowman & Littlefield International. Other publications on this theme include:

• Prior, J. 2023. Rewilding and Olfactory Landscapes. In: Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, A. et al. eds. SMELL. Law and Senses London: University of Westminster Press, pp. 171-190., (10.16997/book68)
• Prior, J. and Brady, E. 2022. Environmental aesthetics and rewilding. In: Boe, S., Faber, H. C. and Kasa, E. eds. Wild: Aesthetics of the Dangerous and Endangered.. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 11-30.
• Ward, K. J. and Prior, J. 2020. The reintroduction of beavers to Scotland: rewilding, biopolitics, and the affordance of non-human autonomy. Conservation and Society 18(2), pp. 103-113. (10.4103/cs.cs_19_63)
• Brady, E. and Prior, J. 2020. Environmental aesthetics: a synthetic review. People and Nature 2(2), pp. 254-266. (10.1002/pan3.10089)
• Prior, J. and Smith, L. 2019. The normativity of ecological restoration reference models: an analysis of Carrifran Wildwood, Scotland, and Walden Woods, United States. Ethics, Policy and Environment 22(2), pp. 214-233. (10.1080/21550085.2019.1625549)
• Prior, J. and Brady, E. 2017. Environmental aesthetics and rewilding. Environmental Values 26(1), pp. 31-51. (10.3197/096327117X14809634978519)
• Prior, J. 2016. Urban river design and aesthetics: A river restoration case study from the UK. Journal of Urban Design 21(4), pp. 512-529. (10.1080/13574809.2016.1187557)
• Prior, J. and Ward, K. J. 2016. Rethinking rewilding: A response to Jørgensen. Geoforum 69, pp. 132-135. (10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.12.003)

Project funding

• Networked through Sound: Listening to 20th Century Wildlife Sound Archives (PI) February 2025-February 2028, AHRC and DFG AH/Z507209/1 £553,189
• Listening to the Archive: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of European Wildlife Sound Archives, 1950 to the Present (PI), 2 January 2023-January 2024, British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant SRG22\220003 £9,880
• A Sense of Place: Exploring Nature & Wellbeing through the Non-Visual Senses (Co-I), February 2018-October 2018, AHRC AH/R009678/1 £59,375
• The Rejoinders research network (Co-I) March 2017-August 2018, The British Council and Wales Arts International India Wales Fund £30,000
• Researching Rewilding in a Changing Europe: Opportunity or Threat? (Co-I), September 2017-May 2018, The Sêr Cymru NRN-LCEE Research Development Fund £7,300

Media

• Interview with Salomé Voegelin for the Listening Across Disciplines project: "How would I begin to describe the qualities of the sound of thousands of worker wood ants moving across a woodland floor"?
• "Rewilding: Reintroduction extinct species back to Britain will be 'enormous' challenge, study finds", The Independent, 29 August 2015

Biography

Qualifications

• Fellow of The Higher Education Academy, 2016
• PhD Human Geography, University of Edinburgh, 2012
• MScR Human Geography, University of Edinburgh, 2007
• MA (distinction) Environment, Development and Policy, University of Sussex, Brighton, 2005
• BSc (hons.) Biological Sciences, University of Exeter, 2004

Career

• Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University (2021 - present)
• Lecturer in Human Geography, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University (2014 - 2021)
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh (2013 - 2014)
• Human Geography Teaching Fellow, Institute of Geography, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh (2012 - 2013)

Honours and awards

• Winner of the Landscape Research Group Doctoral Student Award, 2012 (Thesis: The roles of aesthetic value in ecological restoration: Cases from the United Kingdom)

Committees and reviewing

• Chair of the School of Geography and Planning Ethics Committee

Supervisions

I am interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of:

• Sonic and sensory geography
• Environmental conservation, ecological restoration, and rewilding policy, from a social scientific/humanities perspective
• Environmental aesthetics and ethics

Outside of Cardiff University, I am currently supervisor for the following PhD candidates:

• aim King, Department of Theatre, Film & Television Studies, Aberystwyth University
• Marie Duchêne, Institut für Geographie, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg

Current supervision

James Weldon

Past projects

I have supervised the following PhD candidates to successful completion:

• Kieran O’Mahony, 2015-2020, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, Feral Bo(a)rderlands: Living with and governing wild boar in the Forest of Dean, England
• Mehrnoosh Mansoorgarakani, 2018-2024, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, Assessing and designing soundscapes: a case study of Tehran
• Annika Lindskog, 2023-2024, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, Music, landscape, place: Situatedness and spatiality in late nineteenth/early twentieth century northern European art music