Caroline Knowles BSc PhD
Staff details
Caroline writes about migration and circulations of material objects – some of the social forces constituting globalisation. She is interested in cities, having done research in London, Hong Kong, Beijing, Fuzhou, Addis Ababa, Kuwait City and Seoul. She is currently the Director of the British Academy’s Cities and Infrastructure Programme, which comprises a portfolio of 18 multi-disciplinary projects delivering, with local partners, vital improvements in infrastructure in cities in the global south.
Author of many books and papers, she specialises in visual, spatial and biographical methods, often working with photographers and artists, most recently with Michael Tan (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), and Douglas Harper (Duquesne University, Pittsburg). Caroline is the author of Flip-Flop: a journey through globalisation’s backroads, published by Pluto Press in 2014 and in Brazil in Portuguese in 2018 as Nas Trilhas De Um Chinelo. The accompanying website can be found at www.flipfloptrail.com. She is co-author, with Douglas Harper, of Hong Kong: Migrant Lives, Landscapes and Journeys, published (2009) by the University of Chicago Press.
Caroline holds a Major Leverhulme Research Fellowship Serious Money: a Mobile Investigation of Plutocratic London. She recently worked with Ho Wing Chung, at the City University Hong Kong, on an ESRC project, ‘What calculations and Strategies Drive Young Migrants? An Investigation of the Traffic between London, Hong Kong and Beijing’, and with Roger Burrows, Rowland Atkinson, Tim Butler and Mike Savage on ‘The Very Affluent Worker: A Study of Everyday Life in the Alpha Territory’.
Publications and research outputs
Book
Knowles, Caroline. 2014. Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation's Backroads. London: Pluto Press. ISBN 9780745334110
Knowles, Caroline and Harper, Douglas. 2010. Hong Kong: Migrant Lives, Landscapes and Journeys. Chicago: Chicago University Press. ISBN 9780226448565
Knowles, Caroline and Alexander, Claire, eds. 2005. Making Race Matter: bodies, space and identity. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1403904146
Knowles, Caroline and Swetman, Paul. 2004. Picturing the Social Landscape. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415306409
Knowles, Caroline. 2003. Race and Social Analysis. Sage. ISBN 0761961267
Knowles, Caroline. 2000. Bedlam on the Streets. london: Routledge. ISBN 9780415232999
Knowles, Caroline. 1996. Family Boundaries. Toronto: Broadview Press. ISBN 155111108x
Knowles, Caroline. 1992. Race, Discourse and Labourism. Lo ndon: Routledge. ISBN 041505012x
Book Section
Knowles, Caroline. 2018. Researching and Photographing Cities: Getting started. In: S Nichols and S. Dobson, eds. Learning Cities. Singapore: Springer, pp. 9-22. ISBN 9789811080982
Atkinson, Rowland; Burrows, Roger; Glucksberg, Luna; Ho, Hang Kei; Knowles, Caroline and Rhodes, David. 2017. Minimum City? The Deeper Impacts of the 'Super-Rich' on Urban Life. In: Ray Forrest; Sin Yee Koh and Bart Wissink, eds. Cities and the Super-Rich: Real Estate, Elite Practices and Urban Political Economies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 253-271. ISBN 9781137557155
Knowles, Caroline. 2017. Walking W8 in Manalos. In: Charlotte Bates and Alex Rhys-Taylor, eds. Walking Through Social Research. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781138674042
Article
Amit, Vered and Knowles, Caroline. 2017. Improvising and Navigating Mobilities: Tacking in Everyday Life. Theory Culture & Society, 34(7-8), pp. 165-179. ISSN 0263-2764
Knowles, Caroline. 2017. Reframing sociologies of ethnicity and migration in encounters with Chinese London. The British Journal of Sociology, 68(3), pp. 454-473. ISSN 0007-1315
Knowles, Caroline. 2017. Untangling Translocal Urban Textures of Trash: plastics and plasticity in Addis Ababa. Social Anthropology, 25(3), pp. 288-300. ISSN 0964-0282
Knowles, Caroline. 2017. Walking Plutocratic London: Exploring erotic, phantasmagoric Mayfair. Social Semiotics, 27(3), pp. 299-309. ISSN 1035-0330
Knowles, Caroline. 2015. The Flip-Flop Trail and Fragile Globalisation. Theory Culture and Society, 32(7-8), pp. 231-244. ISSN 0263-2764
Knowles, Caroline. 2014. The Urban Problematic: A Response to Ryan Bishop and John WP Phillips. Theory Culture and Society, 31(7-8), pp. 319-322. ISSN 0263-2764
Knowles, Caroline and Burrows, Roger. 2014. The impact of impact. Etnográfica, 18(2), pp. 237-254. ISSN 0873-6561
Knowles, Caroline. 2014. Trajetórias de um chinelo: micro-cenas da globalização. Contemporânea - Revista de Sociologia da UFSCar, 4(2), ISSN 2236-532X
Knowles, Caroline. 2014. Dancing with Bulldozers: Migrant life on Beijing's periphery. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 18(1), pp. 41-57. ISSN 1360-4813
Knowles, Caroline. 2013. Nigerian London: re-mapping space and ethnicity in superdiverse cities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(4), pp. 651-669. ISSN 0141-9870
Knowles, Caroline. 2011. Cities on the Move: Navigating Urban Life. City, 15(3), pp. 136-153. ISSN 1360-4813
Knowles, Caroline. 2011. Cities on the move: Navigating urban life. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 15(2), pp. 135-153. ISSN 1360-4813
Knowles, Caroline. 2010. 'Mobile Sociology' Commentary on John Urry's Work. British Journal of Sociology, 61, pp. 373-379. ISSN 0007-1315
Knowles, Caroline. 2008. The landscape of post-imperial whiteness in rural Britain. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(1), pp. 167-184. ISSN 0141-9870
Knowles, Caroline. 2007. ‘It’s not what it was’: British Migrants in Postcolonial Hong Kong. Sociology Working Papers, pp. 1-25.
Knowles, Caroline. 2007. Theorizing Race and Ethnicity – Contemporary Paradigms and Perspectives. Sociology Working Papers, pp. 1-20.
Knowles, Caroline. 2006. Handling your Baggage in the Field: Reflections on research relationships. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 9(5), pp. 393-404. ISSN 14645300
Knowles, Caroline. 2006. Seeing Race through the Lens. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29(3), pp. 512-529. ISSN 01419870
Harper, Douglas; Knowles, Caroline and Leonard, Pauline. 2005. Visually narrating post-colonial lives: ghosts of war and empire. Visual Studies, 20(1), pp. 4-15. ISSN 1472-586X
Knowles, Caroline. 2000. Burger King, Dunkin Donuts and community mental health care. Health & Place, 6(3), pp. 213-224. ISSN 13538292
Knowles, Caroline. 1996. The symbolic empire and the history of racial inequality. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 19(4), pp. 896-911. ISSN 01419870
Report
Knowles, Caroline. 2015. Young Londoners in Beijing. Discussion Paper. Goldsmiths University of London
Knowles, Caroline. 2015. Young Chinese Migrants in London. Discussion Paper. Runnymede Trust, London.
