Dr Jessica Pykett

Dr Jessica Pykett

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Senior Lecturer in Human Geography

Contact details

Email
j.pykett@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Jessica Pykett is a social and political geographer with research interests in citizenship, governance, and political subjectivities.  Her research to date has focused on affective and emotional techniques of governance, and the influence of neuroscience and behavioural science on public policy and economic theory. Current work is on the intersections of neuroscience and geography, concepts of urban stress and urban wellbeing, and political geographies of emotional regulation.

Qualifications

PhD, University of Bristol

MSc Society and Space, University of Bristol

BSc Geography, University of Bristol

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Biography

Before joining the University of Birmingham in September 2012, Jessica was a lecturer in Human Geography at Aberystwyth University. Here she worked on a Leverhulme funded grant on the ‘Time-Spaces of Soft-Paternalism’. Previously she was an ESRC research fellow at The Open University and has held research positions at the University of Bristol and Futurelab Education.

Teaching

  • Year 1 Fieldcourse
  • Year 2 Social and Political Geography
  • Year 3 Welfare, Work and Wealth
  • Year 4 MSci Human Geography

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Pykett welcomes enquiries from prospective doctoral researchers in her areas of interest, including:

Emotional politics and emotional regulation
Behavioural public policy and neuroscience informed public policy
Affective governance
Embodied geographies and critical social theories of the body, mind and emotions
Critical neuroscience approaches to urban design, architecture, built environment
Geographies of welfare, wellbeing and mental health
Psychological governance and citizenship
Urban wellbeing and urban stress
Government advertising, communications, social marketing

Research

Jessica Pykett is a social and political geographer with research interests in citizenship, governance, and political subjectivities.  Her research to date has focused on affective and emotional techniques of governance, and the influence of neuroscience and behavioural science on public policy and economic theory. Current work is on the intersections of neuroscience and geography, concepts of urban stress and urban wellbeing, and political geographies of emotional regulation.

Other activities

I qualified as a generalist adviser with the Citizens Advice Bureau in 2006, and was social policy co-ordinator at Ceredigion CAB for some years, winning substantial funding to continue service provision. I have been co-chair of the Citizenship Working Group for the Geographical Association, organising several events to support school geography teachers. I am a member of the Royal Geographical Society - Institute for British Geographers. I have acted as peer reviewer for over 24 journals across many different disciplines. Member of ESRC peer-review college 2015-18, and reviewer for Freie Universität Berlin, Portuguese Research Council, and Carnegie Trust, Scotland.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Whitehead, M, Jones, R, Lilley, R, Pykett, J & Howell, R 2017, Neuroliberalism: behavioural government in the twenty-first century. Economics in the Real World, Taylor & Francis, Abingdon and New York. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315684772

Article

Resch, B, Kyriakou , K, Sagl, G, Petutschnig , A, Werner , C, Niederseer, D, Liedlgruber , M, Wilhelm, F, osborne, T & Pykett, J 2019, 'Detecting moments of stress from measurements of wearable physiological sensors', Sensors, vol. 19, no. 17, 3805. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19173805

Whitehead, M, Jones, R & Pykett, J 2019, 'Questioning post-political perspectives on the psychological state: behavioural public policy in the Netherlands', Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, pp. 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654419867711

Whitehead, M, Jones, R, Lilley, R, Howell, R & Pykett, J 2018, 'Neuroliberalism: Cognition, Context, and the Geographical Bounding of Rationality', Progress in Human Geography. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132518777624

Williamson, B, Pykett, J & Nemorin, S 2017, 'Biosocial spaces and neurocomputational governance: brain-based and brain-targeted technologies in education', Discourse, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2018.1394421

Pykett, J 2017, 'Geography and Neuroscience: Critical engagements with geography’s ‘neural turn’ ', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12213

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Pykett, J, Jupp, E & Smith, F 2017, Introduction: Governing With Feeling. in Emotional States: Sites and Spaces of Affective Governance. Routledge, London.

Pykett, J, Howell, R, Lilley, R, Jones, R & Whitehead, M 2017, “Shaping policy makers’ emotional engagements with behaviour change”. in E jupp, J pykett & F smith (eds), Emotional States : Sites and Spaces of Affective Governance. Routledge, London, pp. 69-84.

Chapter

Pykett, J 2019, A critical neuro-geography of behaviourally - and neuroscientifically - informed public policy. in A Whitworth (ed.), Towards a Spatial Social Policy: Bridging the Gap Between Geography and Social Policy. Bristol, Policy Press.

Pykett, J 2019, Healthy nations: behavioural approaches in public health policy. in B Ewert & K Loer (eds), Behavioural Policies for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Palgrave Studies in Public Health Policy Research, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 53-72.

Whitehead, M, Jones, R & Pykett, J 2019, Nudging around the world: a critical geography of the behaviour change agenda . in H Strassheim & S Beck (eds), Handbook of Behavioural Change and Public Policy. Handbooks of Research on Public Policy series , Edward Elgar.

Pykett, J 2018, Forensic neuropsychology: Social, cultural, and political implications. in A R. Beech, A J. Carter , R E. Mann & P Rotshtein (eds), The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Forensic Neuroscience. vol. 2, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 917-935. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118650868.ch34

Pykett, J & Cromby, J 2017, Mapping Happiness, Managing Urban Emotions. in Assembling neoliberalism: expertise, practices, subjects., 10, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 195-216. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58204-1_10

Pykett, J, Jones, R & Whitehead, M 2016, Introduction: psychological governance and public policy. in J Pykett, R Jones & M Whitehead (eds), Psychological governance and public policy: governing the mind, brain and behaviour. Routledge Research in Place, Space and Politics, Taylor & Francis, London, pp. 1-20. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315680248

Paper

Pykett, J 2017, 'Behavioural Government as a Global Phenomenon', Paper presented at Behavioural sciences and the politics of simplification, Menaggio, Italy, 27/03/17 - 4/04/17.

View all publications in research portal