Political Geography

Political geography explores how space is never neutral. It is shaped by power, and it shapes power in return. Our group examines how geography becomes political, and how borders, bodies, ecologies, and global systems continually remake space in uneven, often unsettling ways.

We study the entangled worlds of development, humanitarianism, war, displacement, extraction, frontier and border violence, and environmental change. Our interest lies not only in how these dynamics unfold, but in how they are lived, contested, and governed in places that are too often treated as the world’s margins.

Our work grows out of long-term, immersive field research anchored in the global South, especially across Asia and Africa, while remaining attentive to wider global patterns. Collectively, our team brings deep regional expertise from Ethiopia, the DRC, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, India, and China, and we work with a broad range of conceptual and methodological approaches.

Our current projects span an equally wide terrain: the politics of mining and resource frontiers in Central and Eastern Africa; indigenous and pastoral land struggles in Ethiopia and Kenya; frontier urbanisation in Asia and Africa; humanitarian interventions and resistance movements in Myanmar; populist politics in Europe; agrarian and post-war transformations in Sri Lanka; and infrastructure-led change across the borderlands of India, China, and Southeast Asia. We also study the spatial politics of migration, borders, and populism in the global North. Our fieldwork sites stretch from refugee camps and mining zones to militarised frontiers, informal settlements, and post-conflict landscapes.

We coordinate two core MSc modules: Political Geography and Development Studies, and we welcome BSc and MSc students interested in theses related to political geography. This includes themes such as borders, conflict, development, resource frontiers, democracy, colonialism, or any of the political questions that animate contemporary spatial life.

Beyond research and teaching, our team is actively engaged in academic and public spheres. Members have served as editors for leading journals and open-access platforms, including Geopolitics, Geoforum, Geographica Helvetica, and Tea Circle Myanmar.
 
For an overview over the lectures, seminars and tutorials offered, please consult  Department of Geography / Studying and the electronic university calendar.