Dr Will Haynes

Broadly speaking, Will is a cultural and urban geographer and is interested in the intersections of everyday life, migration and marginality in transit spaces and urban environments. Spatial perspectives from history, politics, literature and visual arts are also an important aspect of Will’s research and teaching, as he is committed to working outside of discrete academic boundaries.

His research can be categorised into 4 main overlapping themes:

Marginality in urban environments

Cities, historically and in contemporary times, are fascinating spaces of possibility but present a number of pressing challenges. As a result, Will’s research focuses on different aspects of the built environment and inequality, marginality, and exclusion. This includes contested public spaces and transit sites like railway stations, which are cultural reference sites for alterity and difference. It also includes critical understandings of ‘home’, and reassessing how homes are made in unlikely and often stigmatised places throughout cities. Will’s critical urban research has led to his co-organisation of the Contemporary Rome Conference in Italy in 2023 and a 2022 residence and membership at the British School of Rome.

Geographies of migration

Will is a member of the University of Sheffield’s Migration Research Group. He is interested in the overlap between experiences homelessness and migration broadly conceived, including asylum and refugee politics and processes, and the way that border politics are enacted and embodied in urban public space. This includes the racialisation of urban governance discourses, and critical assessments of ‘whiteness’ within city development projects. Will also looks at the storying of migration journeys, the representation of ‘irregular’ migration in politics and by the media. Previous research on migration includes a Research Assistantship at the University of Amsterdam focussing on refugee initiatives and hospitality and commissioned research for the British Council on intercultural encounters in Cape Town, Guangzhou and Rome.

Creative, interdisciplinary and ethical methodologies

Will has worked with several interdisciplinary methods, including film, poetry and sketching in his geographical research, on which he is widely published. Will has presented these methods in several settings, including to the EU-funded MIGREC research network in Belgrade. He has a core focus on ethically-led methodologies, which can be utilised for social justice and inclusion in geographical research, and Will co-led the University of Sheffield’s Participatory Action Research group through the pandemic. He is also an active member and 2023-24 research lead of Culture Space and Difference Research Group, which convene around these kinds of methods.

Urban water, sanitation, and city rivers

Will has an emergent project on Rome’s rivers, in collaboration with John Cabot University in Rome, where he held a visiting fellowship in 2023. The project focusses around the socio-cultural lives of Rome’s three rivers (Tiber, Almone & Aniene), leading to an international conference in 2024, connecting his work on everyday urban inhabitations with wider environmental and ecological concerns. Will’s ‘watery’ research also relates to a longstanding critical concern for toilet access in cities (particularly for those experiencing homelessness) and the discursive relationship between urban waste, sanitation facilities and urban development – particularly for the most marginalised citizens.

Will’s other interests include (post-)Soviet geopolitics and memory, medieval history, rock music, visual arts, and football.