Department of Geography

Reader in Social and Cultural Geography

Telephone:
0116 252 3886 Fax:
0116 252 3854 Email:
mpp2@le.ac.uk
Room:
Bennett Building F59
Personal Homepage

I have research interests in four broad areas of geography: rural social and cultural geography, historical geography, society/environment relations and philosophy in geography. Much of my recent work has focused on the material and symbolic constructions of rural space, with particular regard to the social relations and identities of class and gender. I have undertaken many research projects on contemporary rural societies including:

• A three-year ESRC Research Fellowship on 'The processes of rural gentrification'.
• Studies of the class composition of rural communities in Berkshire, Cotswolds, Gower, Leicestershire and Warwickshire
• Private communities in rural North Carolina
• Rural social change in New Zealand
• Social constructions of time in rural communities at the Millennium.

I have also been conducting research on cultural representations of rurality in television drama programmes, lifestyle magazines and tourist sites. I have published a series of articles and book chapters on aspects of this research, co-authored one book Writing The Rural (Paul Chapman, 1994)) and several other co-authored books will be published shortly including Moving to Rural Idylls (Sage) and Myth and Persistence of Rural Culture (Arnold) Recently I was also involved in the Rural Audit organised by the Labour Group of MPs. Other recent research activities includes:

• The study of the economic, political and social regulation of retailing and marketing in nineteenth century Britain.
• Co-authoring Social exploitation through nature (Pearson, 2000) and the study of enviromentalism with local authorities.
• Work on philosophy and critical social theory and their influenced on the theory and practices of geography.

External Activities

I have also been involved in curriculum development initiatives such as the Social Survey GeoCAL Unit and the use of qualitative data analysis software in teaching. I have also written several articles on teaching the history and philosophy of geography. I am currently a Committee Member of the Rural Geography Study Group of the RGS-IBG.

PhD Supervision

Craig Wheway - 'Nature and spatial extent of gentrification in London Docklands' (with Dr Katy Bennett).

Selected Publications

Phillips, M. (2004) Other geographies of gentrification, Progress in Human Geography 28 (1) pp. 5-30

Phillips, M. (2003) Dramatic ruralities in a changing society, in Gao, J., Le Heron, R. and Logic, J. (eds) Windows on a changing world: conference proceedings of the New Zealand Geographical Society, Auckland: University of Auckland

Phillips, M. (2002) Distant bodies? Rural studies, political economy and poststructuralism, Sociologia Ruralis 42 (2), pp. 81-105

Phillips, M. (2002) The production, symbolisation and socialisation of gentrification: a case study of a Berkshire village, Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 27 (3), pp. 282-308

Phillips, M. and Mighall, T. (2000) Society and Exploitation Through Nature (Harlow: Pearson)

A full list of publications is available in PDF format by clicking here.