Professorship of Political Geography (Prof. Hutta)

The Political Geography group examines how power, governance and everyday practice shape spaces, asking how more just ways of living can be created locally and globally. We investigate the societal and spatial conditions of violence, capital accumulation and exclusion, addressing, for example, enforced disappearances in Latin America, far-right territorialisation in peripheralised regions, and evangelical movements. At the same time, we explore possibilities for transformation, with particular emphasis on embodied spatial agency. We engage with people and movements confronting injustice, including, movements against violence and queer, trans and anti-racists struggles. The group uses ethnographic, participatory and collaborative methodologies and draws on theoretical approaches from materialist and post-structuralist theory, feminism as well as decolonial, citizenship, queer and affect studies. Our international collaborations include longstanding work in Latin America, particularly Brazil. We also contribute to public debate by asking how democracy can be enacted in anti-democratic contexts or how the current dismantling of human-rights governance can be understood and challenged.