Professor Morag Bell

B.A. (Nottingham), D.Phil. (Oxford)

Professor of Cultural Geography

email: M.Bell@lboro.ac.uk

Tel : +44 (0)1509 222742
Fax: +44 (0)1509 223930 

Room NN.1.06, Martin Hall building, East Park

Research and Teaching Interests

My research and teaching interests focus on the cultural dynamics of international North/South relations since the late nineteenth century.  These interests have evolved from field-based work on population mobility and environmental change in colonial and postcolonial eastern and southern Africa.  They have been expanded by doctoral students and by projects funded by a range of agencies including the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Nuffield Foundation, the Department for International Development, and the Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine.

Current research is linked to a series of debates on cultural imperialism, the spatialities of knowledge and postcolonial modes of enquiry.  Three themes provide the focus of my work.  The first examines the links between international philanthropy, with its roots in wealthy Northern institutions, and the dynamics of western cultural power during the twentieth century.  My research explores the ways in which philanthropic support for particular cultural technologies, including inquiries into poverty and wellbeing, inform our understanding of the interactions between knowledge and power across the countries of the North and South.

The second theme focuses on ideas of global health and disease in historical and contemporary contexts.  It explores the ways in which the mobility of communicable and non-communicable diseases between countries of the North and South inform debates about risk, representation and networks of knowledge.  Building on this theme of risk and threat, a third theme examines the links between representations of global climate change and notions of endangered landscapes in the West.

Selected recent publications:

Bell, M. Inquiring minds and postcolonial devices: examining poverty at a distance. Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol.92, 2002, pp.507-524.

Bell, M. Brown, T. and Faire, L. Germs, genes and postcolonial geographies:  reading the return of tuberculosis to Leicester, UK. Cultural Geographies Vol.13, 2006, pp.577-599.

Brown, T and Bell, M. Imperial or postcolonial governance: dissecting the genealogy of a global public health strategy. Social Science and Medicine Vol.67, 2008, pp.1571-1579

Budd, L. Bell, M. and Brown, T. Of plagues, planes and politics: controlling the global spread of infectious diseases by air. Political Geography Vol.28 2009, pp.426-435

Warren, A. Bell, M. and Budd L Airports, localities and disease: representations of global travel during the H1N1 pandemic. Health and Place Vol16 2010 pp.727-735