Professor Jessica Pykett

Professor Jessica Pykett

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Professor of Social and Political 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 governance, knowledge practices, policy innovation and political subjectivities.  Her research 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 technologies of emotional regulation. She has organised and chaired several international seminars on the these themes, on vitalist methodologies and embodied technologies. Her research traces the sociodigital futures imagined and deployed in research, applications and governance within these fields.

Her books include A Modern Guide to Wellbeing Research (forthcoming with B.Searle and M.Alfaro-Simmonds, Edward Elgar), Neuroliberalism. Behavioural Government in the 21st Century (with M.Whitehead R.Jones, R.Lilley and R.Howell, Routledge, 2017), Brain Culture (Policy Press, 2015), Emotional States (with E.Jupp and F.Smith, Routledge, London), Changing Behaviours, On the Rise of the Psychological State (with R.Jones and M.Whitehead, Edward Elgar 2013), and Re-educating Citizens. Governing Through Pedagogy (Routledge, London). She is working currently on a new book, Governing Global Emotions (under contract, Palgrave).

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; Research Methods; Contemporary Human Geography; Tutorials and Study Skills for Geographers
  • Year 2 Social and Political Geography; Research Methods for Human Geographers; Research Labs and Fieldwork
  • Year 3 Welfare, Work and Wealth; Welfare, Migration and Alternative Economies; Geography or Planning Research
  • Year 4 MSc Human Geography; Theoretical Themes; Doing 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
Digital 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, political geographies of emotional regulation, and tracing the sociodigital futures imagined and deployed in research, applications and governance within these fields.

Other activities

  • Jessica co-directs the Centre for Urban Wellbeing with Professor Jennifer Cumming, engaging with policy makers to generate new interdisciplinary research focused on the community dimensions of wellbeing in cities.   
  • Deputy Research Lead for Human Geography, and Chair of Embodied Geographies research group.
  • Member of the Institute for Mental Health.
  • Editorial Board member: Political Geography, Resilience, Citizenship Studies.
  • Grant peer reviewer: Carnegie UK; Dahlem Research School, Freie Universität Berlin; ESRC; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research; Portuguese Research Council, Research Executive Agency of the European Commission, Wellcome Trust.
  • Advisory Board member: Centre for Thriving Places, Bristol.
  • Contributor to Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology POSTbriefs POST-PB-0033 (2019), Preparing for a changing world, and Horizon Scan (2020).
  • Member of the UKRI Loneliness and Social Isolation in Mental Health Network, UCL.
  • Member of British Sociological Association, Sociology of Emotions Study Group.
  • Qualified Citizens Advice Bureau adviser.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Improving Your Local Area Citizen Scientists and Community Stakeholders 2023, 'Employing citizen science to enhance active and healthy ageing in urban environments', Health and Place, vol. 79, 102954. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2022.102954

Singh, S, Pykett, J, Kraftl, P, Guisse, A, Hodgson, E, Humelnicu, UE, Keen, N, Kéïta, S, McNaney, N, Menzel, A, N’dri, K, N’goran, KJ, Oldknow, G, Tiéné, R & Weightman, W 2023, 'Understanding the ‘degree awarding gap’ in geography, planning, geology and environmental sciences in UK higher education through peer research', Journal of Geography in Higher Education, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 227-247. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2021.2007363

Wood, GER, Pykett, J & Stathi, A 2022, 'Active and healthy ageing in urban environments: laying the groundwork for solution-building through citizen science', Health Promotion International, vol. 37, no. 4, daac126, pp. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daac126

Pykett, J 2022, 'Spatialising happiness economics: global metrics, urban politics, and embodied technologies', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 635-650. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12528

Pykett, J & Paterson, M 2022, 'Stressing the ‘body electric’: history and psychology of the techno-ecologies of work stress', History of the Human Sciences, pp. 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/09526951221081754

Pykett, J 2022, 'Why is emotional data failing to produce more humane cities? Urban governance and the (interdisciplinary) problem of wellbeing', Urban Geography, pp. 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.2003589

Fabian, M & Pykett, J 2021, 'Be happy: navigating normative issues in behavioral and well-being public policy', Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 2021, no. 00, pp. 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620984395

Pykett, J, Chrisinger, B, Kalliopi, K, Osborne, T, Resch, B, Stathi, A, Toth, E & Whittaker, A 2020, 'Developing a Citizen Social Science approach to understand urban stress and promote wellbeing in urban communities', Palgrave Communications, vol. 6, no. 1, 85. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0460-1

Pykett, J, Osborne, T & Resch, B 2020, 'From Urban Stress to Neurourbanism: How Should We Research City Well-Being?', Annals of the American Association of Geographers, vol. 110, no. 6, pp. 1936-1951. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1736982

Whitehead, M, Jones, R & Pykett, J 2020, 'Questioning post-political perspectives on the psychological state: behavioural public policy in the Netherlands', Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 214-232. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654419867711, https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654419867711

Chapter

Pykett, J 2022, Knowledge: Wellbeing in global public policy. in R Ballard & C Barnett (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Social Change. 1st edn, Routledge, London, pp. 232-243. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351261562-22

Pykett, J & Lavis, A 2021, Governance and policy in pandemics: approaches to crisis, chaos and catastrophe. in JR Bryson, L Andres, A Ersoy & L Reardon (eds), Living with Pandemics: Places, People and Policy. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., Cheltenham, pp. 227-236. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800373594.00032

Review article

Members of the Institute for Mental Health Youth Advisory Group 2023, 'Urban precarity and youth mental health: an interpretive scoping review of emerging approaches', Social Science and Medicine, vol. 320, 115619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115619

Williams, JE & Pykett, J 2022, 'Mental health monitoring apps for depression and anxiety in children and young people: a scoping review and critical ecological analysis', Social Science and Medicine, vol. 297, 114802. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114802

Wood, G, Pykett, J, Daw, P, Agyapong-Badu, S, Banchoff, A, King, AC & Stathi, A 2022, 'The role of urban environments in promoting active and healthy aging: a systematic scoping review of citizen science approaches', Journal of Urban Health, vol. 99, no. 3, pp. 427–456. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-022-00622-w

View all publications in research portal