Space, Place, and Environment

  

Associate Professor Karen Nairn is currently based at the Otago University College of Education, Dunedin, New Zealand. Her current research focuses on youth identities and post-school transitions. Her recent book Children of Rogernomics. A neoliberal generation leaves school, connects the stories of young people with the wider social and economic story of New Zealand during the last three decades. More broadly, her research focuses on processes of exclusion in education shaped by gender, sexuality and race. Her research portfolio is interdisciplinary in nature with contributions to education, youth studies, geography, and qualitative research. Prior to her university career, she was a high school geography teacher. Her future research plans revolve around investigating how diverse collectives of young people think about a future threatened by climate change, economic precarity, and political instability. Her new research intends to find out what young people consider the most urgent issues to address, how hope influences their collective actions for change, and how their identities are shaped in the process.

Tracey Skelton is Associate Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. She was previously Professor of Critical Geographies at the University of Loughborough in the UK. The essential elements of her research career focus on people who are socially, politically, and intellectually excluded. Her early work focused on the Caribbean and issues of gender and racial inequality, feminist geographies, and methodological analysis. She has contributed to culture and development debates, particularly through her longitudinal research on the island of Montserrat. Recently, A/P Skelton returned to this field of scholarship through research with volunteers and host organizations in Cambodia as part of a major comparative and collaborative project on development partnerships. She was the principal investigator