Madeline Routon

Thesis: 'Making home in the margins: creative placemaking under precarity in London's squats'. Supervised by Prof. Sarah Marie Hall, Prof. Erik Swyngedouw, and Dr. Santiago Leyva del Rio.

Funded by a SEED Future Leaders Studentship, in collaboration with the UKRI-funded Austerity and Altered Life-Courses Project. 

Broadly, my research focuses primarily on creative practices of placemaking under conditions of urban precarity and austerity, particularly those undertaken by women. My recent article ‘Mothers, wives, friends: women’s role in London’s squatting struggles’ in Gender, Place, and Culture drew from archival materials concerning underrepresented histories of women squatting in late 20th century London. My (auto)ethnographic research on the radical London archives which house these histories, involving interviews with the archivists who steward and protect them, will appear in the forthcoming collection Shaking the Archives (Palgrave MacMillan, 2025).

My current PhD project, ‘Making home in the margins: creative placemaking under precarity in London's squats’, deepens these ideological and methodological commitments, conducting oral history interviews with people who squatted in London from 1969-present day. The project will culminate in a co-curated archive of ephemera and materials from these rich intersectional histories, which will be exhibited online and in person and be housed at Bishopsgate Institute.

Methodologically, I am committed to a feminist and decolonial approach centering reciprocity and resourcefulness and incorporating creative, participatory methods.

Prior to postgraduate studies, I worked across the creative arts in Los Angeles, for nonprofits including the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), and Inner City Arts.

I am a member of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives, Manchester Urban Institute's Feminist Collective, and the Cities, Politics, and Economies Research Group.

I am also an Associate Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a member of the American Association of Geographers.

PhD title: 'Making home in the margins: creative placemaking under precarity in London's squats'

Supervised by Prof. Sarah Marie Hall, Prof. Erik Swyngedouw, and Dr. Santiago Leyva del Rio.

I am a Graduate Teaching Assistant on the following courses.

Autumn 2024:

• GEOG10101 Geographies of Globalisation 

Spring 2024:

• GEOG10402 The Human Planet 

Autumn 2023:

• GEOG20101 Economic Geographies 
• GEOG30621 Critical Geographies of Difference 

Spring 2023:

• GEOG12012 Tutorials and Profile of a Research Geographer 
• GEOG20552 North American Cities: Change and Continuity in the Metropolis