From 2024 - 2029, I will lead a team of researchers in the School of Geography at Queen Mary University of London on an exciting new project exploring how transnational communities organize themselves to obtain medications and self-managed sexual and reproductive health treatment. 

People self-manage sexual and reproductive health activities outside of formal health systems because the products and treatments they want are unavailable, unaffordable, or stigmatized. The expanding global market in pharmaceutical products and technologies, combined with the growth in digital platforms where treatment communities organise, has transformed the geography of health. 

This project combines social and natural science methods to study three transnational treatment communities in sexual and reproductive health (SRH), together with the pharmaceutical products they use: sex hormone therapies for gender transition; Pre- and Postexposure Prophylaxis for HIV prevention; and medical abortion pills for pregnancy termination.

I will lead the project as the Primary Investigator. The research team will include three post-doctoral research associates hosted in the School of Geography who will use qualitative methods to carry out the social science aspects of the project. It will also include a team in the QMUL School of Chemistry, where Dr Roberto Buccafusca will supervise a chemistry technician to test the pharmaceutical products in the study. 

This project won a European Research Council Starting Grant in 2023 (worth €1.5million). Delays in UK-EU association (caused by Brexit) led me to transfer the funding to the United Kingdom's Research Innovation Frontiers fund. The project is now fully funded by the UKRI and it will be carried out entirely at Queen Mary University of London. The project will launch in October 2024. 

From 2017-2020, I held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to carry out a project on the changing geographies of abortion. This project allowed me to carry out the research that is forthcoming in Abortion Pills Go Global. 

This project started from the question of how abortion access was being changed by new technologies and transnational activist organizations. Its primary focus was on medication abortion pills, including the digital networks through which information about them was shared and the pipelines through which the medications crossed borders. 

The project had three goals: First, to examine changing technologies and geographies of abortion access; Second, to study the changing nature of state power borders as states create new barriers to abortion access; and third, to understand what abortion pill flows meant for the relationship between women, the state, and reproduction. I carried out research for the project in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Poland, and the USA between 2017-2022. 

Publications from the project include: 

Books:

2023. Abortion Pills Go Global: Reproductive Freedom Across Borders. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 

2020. After Repeal: Rethinking Global Abortion Politics. Editors: Browne, K. and Calkin, S. London: Zed Books. (ISBN 9781786997180). 312 pgs. (My role: co-editor, 50/50 split of editorial duties) Reviewed in Gender & Development, Gender Place & Culture, and Community Development Journal.

Journal Articles: 

2022. "The geography of abortion: Discourse, spatiality and mobility." Progress in Human Geography 46(6): 1413-1430. Co-authored with Cordelia Freeman and Francesca Moore (Equal authorship split, 33/33/33) DOI: 10.1177/03091325221128885

2022. "Legal geographies of medication abortion in the USA." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47(2): 378-392. DOI: 10.1111/tran.12506

2021. "Legal and non-legal barriers to abortion in Ireland and the United Kingdom." Medicine Access@ Point of Care 5. (Co-authored with my PhD student Ella Berny, authorship split 66/33 to me as lead author) DOI: 10.1177/23992026211040023

2021. “Transnational Abortion Pill Flows and the Political Geography of Abortion in Ireland.” Territory Politics Governance 9(2), 163-179 DOI: 10.1080/21622671.2019.1704854

2020. “Persistence and Change in Morality Policy: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Politics of Abortion in Ireland and Poland.” Co-authored with Monika Ewa Kaminska (50/50 equal authorship split). Feminist Review Issue 124: 86–102. DOI: 10.1177/0141778919894451

2019. “Towards a Political Geography of Abortion.” Political Geography 69, 22-9. DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.11.006

2019. “Healthcare, Not Airfare! Art, Abortion and Political Agency in Ireland.” Gender Place & Culture. Gender, Place & Culture. 26(3): 338-361. DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2018.1552928

2018. “Trails and Technologies: Social and Cultural Geographies of Abortion Access” co-authored with Cordelia Freeman (50/50 equal authorship split); Social and Cultural Geography. 20(9):1325-1332. DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2018.1509114

From 2011-2017, I carried out research in the field of feminist political economy. This research included my doctoral research (2011-2015) at the University of York. 

My research during this period explored the ‘Gender Equality as Smart Economics’ agenda promoted by the World Bank and its private sector partners. From the World Bank, to NGOs, and private businesses, discourses about the economic benefits of gender equality and women’s empowerment underpin a range of development interventions that aim to unlock the ‘untapped’ potential of the world’s women. These development agendas have concrete impacts on the lives of girls and women, producing more interventionist forms of development governance, increased power by private sector actors in development, and de-politicization of gender equality issues. 

Publications from the project include:

Book

2018. Human Capital in Gender and Development. Routledge Studies in Gender and Global Politics series. London: Routledge (ISBN 9781138697348). 200 pgs. (Sole-authored monograph) Reviewed in Gender & Development, Progress in Development Studies and The LSE Review of Books.

Journal Articles

 2017. “’Disrupting’ Disempowerment: Neoliberal Feminism and the Private Governance of Gender and Development.” New Formations special issue on ‘Righting Feminism’, no. 91, 69-86. DOI: 10.3898/NEWF:91.04.2017

2016. "Globalizing ‘Girl Power’: Corporate Social Responsibility and Transnational Business Initiatives for Gender Equality." Globalizations 13(2), 158-172. DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2015.1064678

2015. “’Tapping’ Women for Post-Crisis Development: Evidence from the 2012 World Development Report.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17(4), 611-629. DOI:10.1080/14616742.2015.1071994. Reprinted in Gender and Crisis in Global Politics, Ed. Laura Sjoberg, Routledge, 2018.

2015. “Feminism, Interrupted? Gender and Development in the Age of Smart Economics.” Progress in Development Studies 15(4), 295-307. DOI: 10.1177/1464993415592737. Nominated by the editorial board for the Best Article Award of 2015

2015. “Post-feminist spectatorship and the Girl Effect: ‘Go on, really imagine her.’” Third World Quarterly 36(4), 654-669. DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1022525