Dr Catherine Oliver

Profile

I am a social geographer interested in more-than-human geography and urban studies. At Lancaster, I am teaching and researching the Sociology of Climate Change.

Prior to arriving at Lancaster, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge on an ERC-funded project researching urban chickens in London. This research responds to changing demands on food systems, ecologies, and urban space, seeking to understand how non-human life is governed and regulated in cities.

In 2021, I was appointed as a Royal Geographical Society/Wiley Digital Archives Fellow (2021), receiving a fellowship to research animals in geographical exploration. My project is a Wiley Case Study, with an online curated exhibit. In 2021-22, I was also a fellow on the Global Urban History Project’s Dream Conversations series on Cities and the Anthropocene in 2021.

My first book, ‘Veganism, Archives, and Animals,’ was published with Routledge in 2021. The book provides a unique and timely contribution to debates within animal and more-than-human geographies and is the first of its kind in “vegan geographies.” The book draws from my doctoral research on veganism in Britain (University of Birmingham, 2020).

From 2016 to 2017, I worked in the archives of animal activist Richard D. Ryder at the British Library on a PhD placement with Dr Polly Russell and Gill Ridgeley, producing the British Library’s online curation, ‘Archiving Activism’.

Other recent projects include a feminist geography research project theorising academic conferences as microcosms of the university, an ongoing project on more-than-human metabolisms, and a newly launched project on alternative communities and the seek for connection in capitalist Britain.

I currently teach on SOCL221 Climate Change and Society, SOCL521 Environment and Culture, SOCL931 Methods in STS, and SOCL101 The Sociological Imagination. I also supervise PhD students, Masters projects, and undergraduate dissertations.