Research by Colin Fuchs.
Start: October 2025. Department of Geography, Open University: PI Carry van Lieshout, Colin Lorne and Ben Newman.
Overview
Doreen Massey (1944-2016) changed geography. Her theoretical work on space, place and power helped enliven and transform debates across the discipline and well beyond, bringing many into the conversation over the difference that geography makes.
As a prolific public speaker, committed activist, and longstanding educator at the Open University, Massey was a thoroughly public intellectual: from shaping the Greater London Council’s social and economic strategies in the 1980s through to Hugo Chávez adopting her concept of ‘power geometries’ in Venezuela at the turn of the century.
Not only did Massey articulate how the geographical and political are inherently intertwined, but she was insistent that a lively understanding of spatial politics is integral to opening up new possibilities for living together in a changing world.
Doreen Massey’s unpublished archive (held at the Society) contains documents related to all of these as well as further endeavours. It is made up of extensive documentary, audio and visual materials such as:
- Unpublished conference papers
- Preparatory notes for manuscripts
- Communications with different academics, activists and political figures
- Draft policy papers
- Recordings of unpublished lectures
- Transcripts from BBC broadcasts
- Collective teaching material correspondence
Funded by: Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership.