Dr Austin Read
College Lecturer in Geography
Austin is a human geographer operating at the crossroads of environmental, historical, and political geography. His research investigates the historical geographies of colonialism and capitalism that underpin today’s ecological crises, with the primary aim of encouraging more socially and politically conscious responses to environmental change. Austin joined the School of Geography and the Environment as a Departmental Lecturer in 2024. Previously, he earned his BSc, MSc, and PhD in Geography from the University of Bristol, where he also worked as a postgraduate teaching assistant. He has also studied political science and French at Sciences Po Lyon and spent a year training as an archivist at the University of Glasgow.
Undergraduate teaching
Austin lectures on the Prelims Human Geography course, with a particular emphasis on Geographical Techniques. At Hertford College, Austin and his colleagues are responsible for teaching students across the entire breadth of geographical topics for the Preliminary Examination and Final Honour School of Geography.
Graduate teaching
Austin teaches on several MSc courses, including ‘Conservation & Society’ and ‘Conservation Governance’ for the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation & Nature Recovery, as well as Research Methods and Practice for the MSc in Nature, Society & Environmental Governance.
-
Research interests
Austin is currently working on a new project that explores the historical geographies of land enclosure in Britain and their legacy in modern nature recovery efforts. He is also continuing to publish findings from his recently completed PhD research, which was a critical examination of biodiversity conservation in the River Severn and the River Wye.
Publications (peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters and media/creative outputs)
Read, A. Forthcoming. Assemblage, archive, ancestor: theorising historical ontologies and methods with Salmon. Geographical Research (special issue on ‘Nature in/and/of the Archive’).
Read, A. 2025. Infrastructure as archive: Examining the colonial geographies of rivers. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.70020.
Read, A. and Kramsky, Y. A. 2025. (Accepted – in press). ‘End of a cis-hetero discipline? Strategies for a queer political ecology’ in The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology (2nd Edition). Eds: J. Hope, E. Apostolopoulou and A. Collins.
Read, A. 2024. Eutrophicated: Tracking colonial histories of phosphate matter and the Plantationocene inheritances of the River Wye. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 7(6): 2413-2436. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241288377
Read, A. 2023. ‘Sensory Ethnography’ in Sensory Research in the Humanities: An Introduction to Five Methods [Online]. Available at: https://medenvnetwork.wordpress.com/2023/03/28/sensory-research-in-the-humanities/
Read, A. 2021. Seaspiracy: Is the fishing industry killing our oceans? Sustainable Food Trust [Online]. Available at: https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/news-views/seaspiracy-is-the-fishing-industry-killing-our-oceans/
-
Related websites