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Biography Please note, this page is no longer being updated. Please go to my page on the new University site.
I came to the University of Glasgow in January 1995 after finishing my PhD "Condensing the Cold War: Reader's Digest and American Identity" at Syracuse University at the end of 1994. My research interests are in feminist, postcolonial, cultural and political geographies. Much of my research has been undertaken in Africa, most recently in Tanzania. I am an active member of the Glasgow Centre for International Development, and co-ordinate the Environmental Management and Infrastructure research theme. I am currently the Political Geography section editor of Geography Compass and sit on the boards of Scottish Geographical Journal, Urban Studies and Space and Polity.
I am currently supported by an ESRC Mid Career Fellowship. Research interests Previous and recent research includes:
1. I have an interest in the creation of popular geographical imaginations and knowledges, and the ways these are connected to everyday realities of identity and gender roles. In my PhD research and subsequent publications, I have examined how the media construct particular imagined world geographies for their audience at the same time as generating a sense of national identification and purpose for them. I have also published on popular geographies constructed through travel writing, literature and film.
Selected publications:
Sharp J (2000) Condensing the Cold War: Reader's Digest and American identity. University of Minnesota Press.
Sharp J (1996) Hegemony, popular culture and geopolitics: the Reader’s Digest and the construction of danger. Political Geography 15(6/7): 557-570.
Sharp J (2000) Towards a critical analysis of fictive geographies. Area 32(3): 327-334.
2. Great claims are currently being made for the role of public art in cities, particularly in Europe and North America. Some have argued that such projects can reclaim a sense of community while others insist that such aesthetic improvements have an influence on the economic prospects of an area. There are also interesting questions which relate to the responsibility that public art has to its publics and the processes through which various groups of people are involved in the production of the art. This part of my research aims to examine the introduction of a number of public art projects in Scotland both in terms of delivery by a range of design and planning professionals and as the works are received by the various publics they are directed to
Selected publications:
Pollock V and Sharp J (2007) Constellations of Identity: Place-ma(r)king beyond heritage. Environment and planning D: Society and Space 25(5): 1061-1078.
Sharp J (2007) The life and death of five spaces: public art & community regeneration in Glasgow. Cultural Geographies 14: 274-292.
Sharp J, Pollock V and Paddison R (2005) Just art for a just city: public art and social inclusion in urban regeneration. Urban Studies 42(5/6): 1001-1023.
3. Gender and indigenous knowledges in Upper Egypt: The overall aim of the research project is to identify and understand the ways in which indigenous environmental knowledges are constructed and mediated, and subsequently employed by local people living in difficult, semi-arid environments to manage the natural resource base for everyday life. Fieldwork is centred around the Wadi Allaqi area in Upper Egypt. Of particular interest are the ways in which male and female knowledges are constructed differently in relation to the use and management of such resources.
Selected publications:
Briggs J and Sharp J (2004) Indigenous knowledges and development: a postcolonial caution. Third World Quarterly 25(4): 661-676.
Briggs J, Sharp J, Hamed N and Yacoub H (2003) Changing gender roles and environmental knowledges: evidence from Upper Egypt. Geographical Journal 169(4): 313-325.
Sharp J, Briggs J, Hamed N and Yacoub H (2003) Doing gender and development: understanding empowerment and local gender relations. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 28(3): 281-295.
Further information about the impact of this research can be found here. Current research I have three research projects in the early stages of development:
1. Subaltern Geopolitics: This research seeks to reconstruct an alternative vision of the current “war on terror” from the point of view of a continent which is usually rendered silent in various geopolitical visions, or little more than a “site of violence and disorder” and thus always offering the possibility of threat to security. During the Cold War, Africa was part of the “left over” territory of the Third World, whose future was yet to be significantly channelled down the developmental path of either the First or Second alternatives. Similarly in the period since the attacks on the US on September 11th 2001, Africa has been brought into geopolitical visions only in the language of “failed states” which might harbour dangerous forces. In both cases, Africa failed to fit into the neat binary of US-communism or US-terrorism, except as a place which, if not properly shored-up, might provide “breeding ground” for either. Both geopolitical accounts, and critical engagements with them, have tended to overlook alternative, especially African, perspectives on security and international relations: Africa may be represented in geopolitical arguments, but geopolitical arguments originating in Africa rarely get heard.
Focusing on Tanzania as an example which lies outside of the binary US-"terrorist other", but is still very much entangled within the discourses of terror and security at the heart of dominant geopolitics, this research will analyse the discourses through which the war on terror is communicated to Tanzanians through the popular press to examine the extent to which a distinct postcolonial view exists which offers creative alternative, or subaltern, conceptualisations of security and geopolitics.
2. Disease, local knowledge and household vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa: Working with colleagues elsewhere in the University, this project seeks investigate the impact on household survival strategies of infectious diseases of both humans and their livestock, and specifically the relationship between disease and household vulnerability in Dar es Salaam. It will consider: the impact of different human and animal diseases on household survival; local knowledges of diseases and their impacts; attempts by household members to avoid disease; and, strategies adopted by household members to mitigate the impacts of disease. Current tropical disease research can be characterised as investigating ‘top-down’, disease-specific technical solutions. Our focus upon household activity will complement existing work by generating an understanding of household behaviour in response to the threats that infectious diseases pose and how available resources to avoid and mitigate consequences of disease are utilised. This will help to produce disease prevention policies that are scientifically sound but also appropriate to the target populations.
3. A bewitched environment? indigenous knowledges, sustainable development and witchcraft in Kafinda Game Management Area, Zambia: this project seeks to build upon earlier work on "indigenous knowledges" to take seriously understandings of the world that may be profoundly at odds with western ways of understanding cause and effect in the world. In Africa, perhaps the most challenging instance of this is the significance of the occult, enchantment and witchcraft (sometimes identified as “traditional beliefs”) to many people's understanding of their place in the social and natural order. I want to examine the role of these knowledges in villagers' understandings of the environment - specifically around issues of conservation and poaching - around the Kasanka Game Reserve in Zambia. Recent publications | View all publications >> Sharp, J. 2011. A subaltern critical geopolitics of the "war on terror": postcolonial security in Tanzania, Geoforum 42: 297-305. Sharp, J. 2011. Situating progressive geopolitics: culture, politics and language. Political Geography 30(1): 51-51. Sharp, J. 2011. Subaltern geopolitics: introduction. Geoforum 42: 271-273. Sharp, J., Briggs, J., Yacoub, H. and Hamed, N. 2010. "Women’s Empowerment: A Critical Re-evaluation of a GAD Poverty Alleviation Project in Southeast Egypt” in Chant S ed. The International Handbook on Gender and Poverty. Elgar, 587-593. Sharp, J., Campbell, P. and Laurie, E. 2010. The violence of aid? Giving, power and active subjects in One World Conservatism. Third World Quarterly 31(7): 1125-1143. doi:10.1080/01436597.2010.518789 >> Recent research grants | View all grants >> Sharp, J. 2011-13. ESRC Mid-Career Development Fellowship, Creating postcolonial subjectivity subaltern geopolitics, knowledge and citizenship in Tanzania, £249,708 (ESRC, RES-070-27-0039). Sharp, J. 2010-11. The environmental and social factors affecting human disease risk in Kibera, Nairobi, £2040, Carnegie Trust. Sharp, J. 2009. A subaltern critical geopolitics of the “war on terror”: postcolonial conceptualisations of security in Tanzania, £2,360 (Carnegie Trust). Teaching responsibilities I teach in Geography-1, Honours and the Mres programmes in Geography. I also offer the Honours Option "Cultural Geography". Current postgraduate students
David Beel (PhD candidate)
Patricia Campbell (PhD candidate)
Emma Laurie (PhD candidate)
Cheryl McGeachan (PhD candidate)
Orleans Mfune (PhD candidate)
Geraldine Perriam (PhD candidate)
Thomas Aneurin Smith (PhD candidate)
Andrew Wilbur (PhD candidate)
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