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McGuirk, Pauline M. Senior Prof.

Senior Professor

  • Professor - School of Geography and Sustainable Communities 2016 -
  • Director - Australian Centre for Culture, Environment, Society and Space (ACCESS) 2018 -
  • Co-Editor, Progress in Human Geography - Sage 2015 - 2020
  • Director, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies - University of Newcastle 2006 - 2015

Overview

I  joined the School of Geography and Sustainable Communities at UOW in 2016, after being Professor and Director of the Centre of Urban and Regional Studies and Head of Discipline (Geography and Environmental Studies) at the University of Newcastle, NSW. As an urban political geographer, I have worked with colleagues across economic, cultural and social geography as well as in sociology, planning, political science and international relations, and with practitioners and policy makers in state and local governments. I have been a visiting fellow at National University of Ireland (Maynooth), UBC (Vancouver), Trinity College (Dublin) and at the universities of Glasgow, Durham and Bristol. In 2016 I was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. In 2019 I was awarded the MacDonald Holmes Medal (Geographical Society of NSW) (distinguished contribution in the field of geographical education in Australia).

Top Publications

Research Overview

  • I am an urban political geographer. My major interests revolve, broadly, around critical studies of urban governance, its changing geographies, material practices and politics, and the differential implications for urban places, communities, subjectivities and power. My work draws broadly on post-structural political economy approaches that seek to combine critical and generative orientations.  

    A major strand of my work has been concerned to analyse the changing geographies and practices of neoliberalised urban governance.  Resisting universalized accounts, I have sought to unpack urban neoliberalism as a political project that is contingently performed and unevenly reproduced in diverse contexts. Empirically, I have developed this analysis through explorations of competitive urbanism, the private governance of urban neighbourhoods and, most recently, urban regeneration.

    A second strand of my research centres on the strategic role of cities in climate governance and low carbon urban transitions, especially around energy. I have explored the evolution of the urban governance of carbon in Australian cities—across an array of state and non-state actors working across multiple scales—teasing out its modes, practices, and political implications. In related work on urban energy transitions, I have traced how these transitions are being assembled, re-routing flows of resources and reconfiguring urban political interests as they unfold.

    I am also increasingly interested in analysing the emergent urban geographies and governance of ‘smart’ and ‘sharing cities’. As forms of urban governance, both smart and sharing are underpinned by technological platforms, combine progressive and regressive potentials, and are likely to drive a host of urban economic, socio-spatial and political transformations. I aim to think critically and generatively about the urban politics of ‘smart’ and ‘sharing’, their promise and their peril in future work.  

Available as Research Supervisor

Selected Publications

Other Research Activities

Available as Research Supervisor

Potential Supervision Topics

    • critical geographies of urban governance
    • geographies of smart urbanism (including sharing cities)
    • practices and politics of urban regeneration

Advisees

  • Graduate Advising Relationship

    Degree Research Title Advisee
    Doctor of Philosophy Sharing Cities: New Strategies for Communal Sharing Santala, Inka
    Doctor of Philosophy Making Things, Producing Culture, Housing People? Competing Visions of Industrial Land Use in the Contemporary City Lyons, Craig
    Doctor of Philosophy Tiny Geographies of Home: Downsizing the 'Great Australian Dream' Penfold, Hilton
    Doctor of Philosophy From experimentations to collaborative governance: The role and implications of experimentations in shaping Australian smart cities Santala, Ville

Keywords

  • Critical Urban Studies

  • Urban governance

  • Urban political geography

  • Urban theory

Full Name

  • Pauline McGuirk

Web Of Science Researcher Id

  • A-2302-2010    

Top Publications

Research Overview

  • I am an urban political geographer. My major interests revolve, broadly, around critical studies of urban governance, its changing geographies, material practices and politics, and the differential implications for urban places, communities, subjectivities and power. My work draws broadly on post-structural political economy approaches that seek to combine critical and generative orientations.  

    A major strand of my work has been concerned to analyse the changing geographies and practices of neoliberalised urban governance.  Resisting universalized accounts, I have sought to unpack urban neoliberalism as a political project that is contingently performed and unevenly reproduced in diverse contexts. Empirically, I have developed this analysis through explorations of competitive urbanism, the private governance of urban neighbourhoods and, most recently, urban regeneration.

    A second strand of my research centres on the strategic role of cities in climate governance and low carbon urban transitions, especially around energy. I have explored the evolution of the urban governance of carbon in Australian cities—across an array of state and non-state actors working across multiple scales—teasing out its modes, practices, and political implications. In related work on urban energy transitions, I have traced how these transitions are being assembled, re-routing flows of resources and reconfiguring urban political interests as they unfold.

    I am also increasingly interested in analysing the emergent urban geographies and governance of ‘smart’ and ‘sharing cities’. As forms of urban governance, both smart and sharing are underpinned by technological platforms, combine progressive and regressive potentials, and are likely to drive a host of urban economic, socio-spatial and political transformations. I aim to think critically and generatively about the urban politics of ‘smart’ and ‘sharing’, their promise and their peril in future work.  

Selected Publications

Other Research Activities

Potential Supervision Topics

    • critical geographies of urban governance
    • geographies of smart urbanism (including sharing cities)
    • practices and politics of urban regeneration

Advisees

  • Graduate Advising Relationship

    Degree Research Title Advisee
    Doctor of Philosophy Sharing Cities: New Strategies for Communal Sharing Santala, Inka
    Doctor of Philosophy Making Things, Producing Culture, Housing People? Competing Visions of Industrial Land Use in the Contemporary City Lyons, Craig
    Doctor of Philosophy Tiny Geographies of Home: Downsizing the 'Great Australian Dream' Penfold, Hilton
    Doctor of Philosophy From experimentations to collaborative governance: The role and implications of experimentations in shaping Australian smart cities Santala, Ville

Keywords

  • Critical Urban Studies

  • Urban governance

  • Urban political geography

  • Urban theory

Full Name

  • Pauline McGuirk

Web Of Science Researcher Id

  • A-2302-2010    

Visualisations

  Publication History
 

Research Areas