Emma Jackson
Staff details
Emma Jackson is an urban sociologist working on practices of place, belonging and the city. She is a Reader in Sociology and the Director of the Centre for Urban and Community Research [CUCR] (https://www.gold.ac.uk/cucr/). Before joining Goldsmiths in 2015, Emma held the Urban Studies Foundation fellowship at the University of Glasgow.
Emma's research focuses on people's everyday practices of belonging and the dynamics of urban space. Her work primarily focuses on London and the relationship between the production of space, belonging and forms of class, multiculture and urban change. She specialises in teaching creative research methods and urban sociology. She is currently working on the project ‘Place-making and the Rivers of Lewisham’(funded by Goldsmiths Strategic Research Fund).
She was an editor of the Sociological Review from 2017-2023 and is a trustee of the IJURR Foundation.
Academic qualifications
- PhD in Sociology 2010
- MA Social Research 2004
- BA Sociology and Cultural Studies 2003
Teaching and Supervision
Emma is the co-Director of Postgraduate Research and the convener of MA Sociology (urban Studies). She also convenes the courses Methodology Now (MA), Cities and Society (MA), Rethinking the City (MA) and London (BA). The latter is a course entirely taught through walking in the city.
Research interests
Emma's research has focussed on a wide range of urban spaces from day centres to leisure space to urban rivers.
Emma started out conducting ethnographic research with young homeless people. Through engaging with the young people's accounts of movement and space she argued that young homeless people became 'fixed in mobility', a condition that impacted on both possible futures and everyday life. She then went on to work on the project 'The Middle Classes and the City: A comparison of Paris and London' (ESRC) leading to the publication of a range of papers with Michaela Benson and Tim Butler about the spatial practices and imaginaries of the middle classes in London.
Emma was a Co-I on the project 'Mapping Immigration Controversies' led by Hannah Jones that set out to study Government anti-immigration campaigns in real time. In this project she particularly focussed on how anti-immigration campaigns unfold in, impact on and are met with resistance in particular locales.
Emma's next projects were an ethnography of a London bowling alley ('Bowling together?: the choreography of everyday multiculture', ESRC), allowing her to explore leisure practices, multiculture and urban change in a site that was ear-marked for demolition. And a project investigating the boom of high-up spaces of lesiure in Peckham (Above Street Level, British Academy). Emma concluded that while 'diversity' is is celebrated as an atmosphere and generator of capital, existing spaces of everyday urban multiculture are at best unprotected and at worst not recognised, devalued and demolished.
Most recently Emma has been working on a project called 'Place-making and the Rivers of Lewisham' which examines the relationship between formal and informal practices of place-making and the three rivers of the Borough of Lewisham – from the ways the rivers are represented in council and city level planning, to the everyday ways in which local people engage with river spaces.
Publications and research outputs
Book
Jones, Hannah; Gunaratnam, Yasmin; Bhattacharyya, Gargi; Davies, Will; Dhaliwal, Sukhwant; Forkert, Kirsten; Jackson, Emma and Saltus, Roiyah. 2017. Go Home? The Politics of Immigration Controversies. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 9781526113221
Jackson, Emma. 2015. Young Homeless People and Urban Space: Fixed in Mobility. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9780415722162
Bacque, Marie-Helene; Bridge, Gary; Benson, Michaela; Butler, Tim; Charmes, Eric; Fijalkow, Yankel; Jackson, Emma; Launay, Lydie and Vermeesch, Stephanie. 2015. The middle classes and the city: a study of Paris and London. Houdsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave. ISBN 9781137332592
Edited Book
Jackson, Emma, ed. 2023. Writing Walking (One day in late Spring during a global pandemic). London: Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University of London. ISBN 9781399945158
Jones, Hannah and Jackson, Emma, eds. 2014. Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging: Emotion and Location. New York and London: Routledge Earthscan. ISBN 9781138000650
Book Section
Jackson, Emma. 2021. Flâneuse Fragments: Towards a critical & situated feminist approach to walking in the city. In: Anita Strasser and Carla Duarte, eds. Walking Places - Conference Proceedings. Lisbon: DINÂMIA’CET-IUL, pp. 32-39. ISBN 9789897813092
Benson, Michaela and Jackson, Emma. 2018. From class to gentrification and back again. In: , ed. The Handbook of Gentrification Studies. London: Edward Elgar, pp. 63-80. ISBN 9781785361739
Forkert, Kirsten; Jackson, Emma and Jones, Hannah Jones. 2016. Whose Feelings Count? Performance politics, emotion and government immigration control. In: Eleanor Jupp; Jessica Pykett and Fiona Smith, eds. Emotional States: Sites and Spaces of affective Governance. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 9781472454058
Rhys-Taylor, Alex; Jackson, Emma and Jones, Hannah. 2014. Moving and Being Moved. In: Emma Jackson and Hannah Jones, eds. Emotion and Location: Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging. London, New York: Earthscan Routledge, pp. 1-10. ISBN 978-1-13-800065-0
Saha, Anamik and Watson, Sophie. 2014. Ambivalent Affect/Emotion: Conflicted Discourses of Multicultural Belonging. In: Hannah Jones and Emma Jackson, eds. Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging: Emotion and Location. London: Routledge, pp. 99-111. ISBN 978-1138000650
Jackson, Emma. 2014. The Pigeon and the Weave: the Middle Classes, Dis/comfort and the Multicultural City. In: Hannah Jones and Emma Jackson, eds. Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging: Emotion and Location. New Yoirk and London: Routledge Earthscan. ISBN 9781138000650
Article
Lisiak, Agata; Back, Les and Jackson, Emma. 2021. Urban Multiculture and Xenophonophobia in London and Berlin. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 24(1), pp. 259-274. ISSN 1367-5494
Jackson, Emma; Benson, Michaela and Calafate-Faria, Francisco. 2021. Multi-sensory ethnography and vertical urban transformation: Ascending the Peckham Skyline. Social & Cultural Geography, 22(4), pp. 501-522. ISSN 1464-9365
Jackson, Emma. 2020. Bowling Together? Practices of Belonging and Becoming in a London Ten-Pin Bowling League. Sociology, 54(3), pp. 518-533. ISSN 0038-0385
Jackson, Emma. 2019. Valuing the bowling alley: Contestations over the preservation of spaces of everyday urban multiculture in London. The Sociological Review, 67(1), pp. 79-94. ISSN 0038-0261
Benson, Michaela and Jackson, Emma. 2017. Making the middle classes on shifting ground? Residential status, performativity and middle‐class subjectivities in contemporary London. British Journal of Sociology, 68(2), pp. 215-233. ISSN 0007-1315
Jackson, Emma and Butler, Tim. 2015. Revisiting ‘social tectonics’: The middle classes and social mix in gentrifying neighbourhoods. Urban Studies, 52(13), pp. 2349-2365. ISSN 0042-0980
Jackson, Emma and Benson, Michaela. 2014. Neither ‘Deepest, Darkest Peckham’ nor ‘Run-of-the-Mill’ East Dulwich: The Middle Classes and their ‘Others’ in an Inner-London Neighbourhood. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(4), pp. 1195-1210. ISSN 03091317
Benson, Michaela and Jackson, Emma. 2013. Place-making and Place Maintenance: Practices of Place and Belonging among the Middle Classes. Sociology, 47(4), pp. 793-809. ISSN 0038-0385
Jackson, Emma. 2012. Fixed in Mobility: Young Homeless People and the City. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 36(4), pp. 725-741. ISSN 0309-1317
Audio
Benson, Michaela and Jackson, Emma. 2018. Above Street Level Podcasts.
Digital
Drever, John L.; Jackson, Emma; Rondel, Louise; Weleminsky, Carter Joseph; Cook, Christopher; Cobianchi, Mattia and Leadley, Marcus. 2021. Sounding the River Quaggy.
Jones, Hannah; Bhattacharyya, Gargi; Forkert, Kirsten; Davies, Will; Dhaliwal, Sukhwant; Gunaratnam, Yasmin; Jackson, Emma and Saltus,, Roiyah. 2014. "Swamped" by anti-immigration campaigns.
Printed Ephemera
Jackson, Emma and Benson, Michaela. 2018. Above Street Level.
Further profile content
Featured publications
2015:
Young Homeless People and Urban Space: Fixed in Mobility
An ethnography of young homeless people in London. Shortlisted for the Thinking Allowed BBC Radio 4 Prize for Ethnography (2016)
2019:
Valuing the bowling alley: Contestations over the preservation of spaces of everyday urban multiculture in London
Builds on ‘the convivial turn’ by approaching the workings of urban spaces of multiculture as entangled with processes of urban change, infused with judgements about value
2020:
Bowling Together? Practices of Belonging and Becoming in a London Ten-Pin Bowling League
propose a framework of ‘Proposes a framework of 'practices of belonging and becoming’ for understanding convivial participation in urban space.
2019:
Multi-sensory ethnography and vertical urban transformation: ascending the Peckham Skyline
A paper that demonstrates how multi-sensory ethnography might enrich critical analysis of vertical urban transformation
2013:
Place-making and Place Maintenance: Performativity, Place and Belonging among the Middle Classes
A paper that introduces performativity and processes of place-making into discussions about middle-class residents’ place attachments.
Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups
Research projects
2015-2019:
Bowling Together? The choreography of Everyday Multiculture
An ESRC-funded ethnographic research project exploring leisure practices and urban change through the site of a London bowling alley
2023:
Place-making and the Rivers of Lewisham
Exploring the relationship between urban rivers, everyday practice and development. Funded by Goldsmiths Strategic Research Fund
2016-2017: Above Street Level
Media engagements
2018:
The fight to preserve a legendary bowling alley: Why venues like Rowans Tenpin Bowl are cultural gems too
Piece in the FT on Emma's bowling research
2014: We are on the brink of a homelessness crisis among young people
2022: Surviving Society ep. 173. Emma Jackson: Leisure Spaces, gentrification and value