The Taylor and Francis award, football related trafficking and race in geography - Dr James Esson

Dr James Esson is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Loughborough University, as well as head of the RGS-IBG RACE Working Group’s Teaching and Learning subcommittee.

In this podcast episode, Dr Esson talks to us about being this year's Taylor and Francis Award recipient, his work on the irregular migration of West African males to Europe through football related human trafficking and issues of race within British geography.

Throughout this epsiode, Dr Esson mentions a number of academic papers of note, including Vandana Desai's 2017 paper 'Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) student and staff in contemporary British Geography' and Divya Tolia-Kelly's 2017 paper 'A day in the life of a Geographer: ‘lone’, black, female'. We also spend some time talking about an impactful paper, 'The 2017 RGS ‐IBG chair's theme: decolonising geographical knowledges, or reproducing coloniality?'.

If you'd like to read further about Dr Esson's work on football related human trafficking, his 2015 paper 'Better Off at Home? Rethinking Responses to Trafficked West African Footballers in Europe' is a good introduction to the issue.

About Geography now podcasts

Geography now is a new podcast series from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). In this series, we’ll be talking to geographers about the work that they’re doing, topics they’re passionate about, and opinions they have about the world around us.

At a time when it is impossible to host speakers at the Society, we are committed to creating content that can be accessed online, and are excited to feature individuals who would have spoken at our events around the UK.

Featured image credit: Jannik Skorna/Unsplash