Dr Julian Clark BA (Hons), MSc, PhD

• BA (Hons) in Geography, University of Oxford. Peter Kirk Memorial Scholar
• MSc in Landscape Ecology, Design and Management, Wye College, University of London
• PhD Department of Geography, University College London 

Julian Clark is Reader in Political Geography at the University of Birmingham. His research informs and extends debates focussed on critical geographical understandings of the state, and the governance of natural resources. In these domains Julian examines questions of how states are materialized and stabilised over space and time, including through geographies of diplomacy; and critical governance approaches to environmental change through evidence-based decisionmaking and novel theoretically informed methods. He has given invited talks around the world on these topics in Australia, the United States, Germany, France, Sweden and Nepal. He completed his PhD in Geography at the University College London and worked at UCL and Birkbeck University of London, before moving to University of Birmingham.

My research focuses in two areas – developing critical understandings of the state (particularly how states materialize and exercise power, and the practices of state representation through geographies of diplomacy); and on critical governance approaches to natural resource management (particularly water, and its complex associations with global change and social-ecological and socio-technical systems). I have 15 doctoral student completions and currently supervise five PhDs.

I welcome ideas for doctoral research projects in the following areas:
- governance of natural resource management
- critical geopolitics
- political geographies of the state; state spatialities; and forms of state representation, including diplomacy

Julian’s research focuses in two areas – developing critical understandings of the state (particularly how states materialize and exercise power, and the practices of state representation through geographies of diplomacy); and on critical governance approaches to natural resource management (particularly their complex associations with global change and social-ecological and socio-technical systems). He currently co-leads the Hidden Depths project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, examining the pressing issues of environmental change associated with mining sand from rivers in northern India and Bangladesh: sand mining is one of the most exploitative forms of resource management globally. Julian’s role in the project is to develop new approaches to understanding how and whether sand can be mined sustainably using innovative governance approaches. He also has ongoing ESRC funded impact related research examining sand extraction procedures and practices in Northern Ireland. As part of the EU funded PyroLife consortium, Julian has been working with colleagues in the Food and Agriculture Organization (Rome), European University (Cyprus) and Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy) to establish new ways to understand the governance and management of wildfires. Julian has written four monographs including The Modalities of European Union Governance (published with Oxford University Press), on the institutional pathways and spatial patterning of governance within the European Union, and The Spatialities of Europeanization (published with Routledge). He has 80 internationally peer reviewed publications, supported by funding from European Union, ESRC, European Science Foundation and NERC – DFID funded projects. His internationally leading research has led to appointments as specialist advisor to the UK House of Lords on governance of innovation in rural areas, and to the UK’s Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology on precision farming.

I am involved in a wide range of professional services, public outreach and other interdisciplinary activities, including:

Specialist advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union. Advising on scrutiny of EU legislation in environmental, regional development and agricultural policy; providing guidance to members on inquiry into Innovation in European rural areas.

Adviser, Rural livelihoods programme, New Economics Foundation

Associate Research Fellow, Institute for European Environmental Policy, London.

Grant Assessment Panel, European Science Foundation referee panel

I have refereed for internationally peer-reviewed journals including Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers; Political Geography; Area; Environment and Planning A; Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy; Geoforum; Geografiska Annaler; Journal of Environmental Planning and Management; Land Use Policy; Journal of Rural Studies; International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology; International Journal of Water Management.