• PhD in Geography (University of Lausanne, 2016) 
• MA Social Development (University of Sussex, 2011) 
• BA(hons) International Studies, minor in Economics (University of Regina, 2010) 

Dr Cornea joined the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham as a Lecturer in Human Geography in February 2018. Prior to coming to Birmingham, she was a Swiss National Science Foundation funded Visiting Research Fellow at University College London. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland).

Dr Cornea contributes to the following modules: 

Undergraduate 

• 2^nd Year fieldtrip to Berlin 

Postgraduate 

• 406 Geopolitics and Globalisation  

Potential students with research interests in South Asian or Southern African cites, particular in the areas of:

• urban governance,
• urban political ecology, 
• waste and discards,
• urban water (particularly non-piped water),
• local environmental politics,

may contact Dr Cornea directly.

Dr Cornea’s research uses the environment as lens in to urban politics and governance. She is particularly interested in understanding how the environment becomes enrolled into networks and practices of power and in turn how this effects the lives of ordinary urban residents. By focusing on the complex, temporal and situated nature of everyday practices of a diverse range of state and non-state actors on the one hand, and the messiness of state-led policy making and implementation on the other she seeks to expose and examine the ways that cities are (re)produced as power-infused, and often highly uneven and inequitable landscapes. 

She has examined a diverse range of case studies including urban water bodies (West Bengal), the politics of urban solid waste management (rubbish) (West Bengal and Zambia) and the roll of situated governance actors in shaping urban environments (West Bengal). Her research has been published in IJURR, Environment and Planning A, Geography Compass, Local Environment and in edited volumes.