Kathryn
Cassidy

Kathryn is a political geographer and activist, whose work explores processes and practices of bordering and ordering contemporary societies and the ways in which these are being disrupted both through collective and mundane actions. Her current research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2019-2021), seeks to address current theoretical and conceptual gaps in the field of border(ing) studies by developing disorder as a conceptual lens for analysing bordering processes and practices, drawing primarily on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. This conceptual work is underpinned by an empirical study of the disorders of bordering within three different UK public institutions: the National Health Service, higher education and social security. Her current project builds upon earlier work, which focused on the ways in which borders and the processes and practices through which they are (re)made have moved from the margins into the centre of contemporary social and political life. This research primarily emanates from a collaboration with colleagues from the EUBorderscapes (2012-2016) project, Professor Nira Yuval-Davis and Dr. Georgie Wemyss. Kathryn has wider research interests in geopolitics and institutional geographies. Her PhD research in Ukraine and Romania explored the alter-geopolitical lives of those living in marginalised communities. More recently, she has been collaborating with colleagues to research a range of different forced accommodation settings, including prisons and asylum seeker housing. Kathryn completed her undergraduate studies in geography at the University of Nottingham, before moving on to study for an interdisciplinary MA at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL in 1999-2000. After a few years of working in the private sector, she returned to academia in 2005 to complete an MA and PhD at the University of Birmingham, which were funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. She taught at the University of Birmingham in the 2006-2007 academic year and whilst carrying out research in Ukraine, she also gave a series of lectures at Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University. She was a research fellow at the University of Babes-Bolyai in Romania from January to July 2009. Prior to joining Northumbria in September 2013, Kathryn worked in the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, initially as a Teaching Fellow and then as a Lecturer in Human Geography.