Areas of Ph.D. and D.Prof. supervision:

• Cultural and historical geography
• History and philosophy of geography
• Mobility and transport
• Theoretical approaches to Space and Place
• Cultures of landscape
• National Identity and Nationalism
• Infrastructural geographies
• Twentieth century Britain
• Festival of Britain 1951
• Welsh cultural history
• Cultural heritage
• Port history and heritage

Current PhD Students:

• Anna Pennington 
• Lowri Ponsford
• Kirsty Usher

Current D.Prof. student: 

• Vaughan Williams

Cultural and Historical Geography

I have a broad interest in cultural and historical geography, and recently co-edited The Routledge Handbook in Cultural Geographies (2026, with Anna Secor and Shanti Sumartojo). I am interested in cultural and social theory, theoretical approaches to geography, poststructuralist geographies, and often conduct empirical research on the cultural and historical geographies of 20th Century Britain (especially England and Wales). 

Mobility

A key strand of my research focuses on social science and humanities approaches to mobility and transport. I am co-Director of Aberystwyth University's Centre for Transport and Mobility (CeTraM), and have published two monographs in this area ('Driving spaces: a cultural-historical geography of England's M1 motorway' (Blackwell Publishing, 2007) and 'Mobility, Space and Culture' (Routledge, 2012)), and the co-authored book ‘Connections’ (2025). I have also co-edited five books on mobility, including 'Geographies of Mobilities' (Ashgate, 2011), 'The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities' (2014), 'Mobility and the humanities' (Routledge, 2018, Korean translation 2019), and 'Empire and Mobility in the Long Nineteenth Century' (MUP 'Studies in imperialism' series, 2020). I am an editor of ‘Applied Mobilities’ and member of the editorial boards of 'Mobilities', ‘Transfers’ and ‘Mobility Humanities’. I am General Editor of Bloomsbury's 6-volume collection on 'A Cultural History of Transport and Mobility' (due out 2026). I am coinvestigator on a £2.5m ‘Infrastructure humanities’ grant at Konkuk University (2025-31).

Theories of Space and Place

I have published widely on theoretical approaches to place and space, including an advanced text-book on 'Space' for Routledge's 'Key ideas in Geography' Series (2022) which provided the first comprehensive and accessible examination of approaches that have crossed between such diverse fields as philosophy, physics, architecture, sociology, anthropology, and geography. The book was reviewed by a panel in the AAG Review of Books in 2024. Prior to this I edited a four-volume major reference work on ‘Space’ in the ‘Critical Concepts in Geography Series (Routledge, 2016).

Festival of Britain 1951

My current research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, is examining the role of Wales and Welsh people in the Festival of Britain. It looks at how discourses of Welshness and Britishness were woven through the celebrations, the role of key Welsh organisations in official events, the role of the Welsh language in celebrations, and the resistance of some Welsh nationalists and local authorities to participating in this British Festival. I am currently writing a book based on this project for the University of Wales Press.  

Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Place

I was AU Principal Investigator on the €3.2 million project 'Ports, Past and Present' project (2019-23) and AU co-investigator on the €3 million ‘Coastal Uplands, Heritage and Tourism’ (CUPHAT) project (2021-23), both funded by ERDF through the Ireland-Wales programme. The major outputs for 'Ports, Past and Present' were 9 films produced with Mother Goose Films.  

DGES Director of Marketing and Recruitment

Head of the Cultural and Historical Geography Research Group; Member of  the Research Committee