I am a feminist political geographer with varied research interests including postcolonialism, health, and critical geopolitics.  Much of my early work sought to extend what is considered to be the geopolitical beyond the formal spheres of statecraft to include popular culture and the everyday, and this has continued through my more recent postcolonial work on subaltern geopolitics.  

In the last 20 years, I have also worked on environment, gender and health projects in Africa.  I have collaborated with local researchers and Bedouin women on a gender and development project in Wadi Allaqi in south-eastern Egypt, and am current working as part of an interdisciplinary team of epidemiologists, vets, modellers and social scientists to evaluate the key drivers of zoonotic disease (those which are transmitted from animals to humans) in northern Tanzania, understand the impacts of these diseases, and develop interventions that will be appropriate for the various affected communities. Together with researchers who use arts-based methodologies I am trying to develop collaborative, participatory approaches to research into environmental and health-based issues.

In 2022 I was named Geographer Royal for Scotland.