Dr Marco Antonsich

PhD (Trieste, Italy), PhD (Boulder, USA)

  • Doctoral Programme Lead (Geography and Environment)
  • Reader in Political Geography

Research groups and centres

Publications
Google Scholar
Marco Antonsich

Academic Career

  • 2024 - : Reader in Political Geography, º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ
  • 2015-2023: Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ.
  • 2012-2015: Lecturer in Human Geography, º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ.
  • 2011-2012: Visiting Professor, Department of International Relations and European Studies, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
  • 2010: Visiting Professor, Franklin College, Lugano, Switzerland.
  • 2007-2009: Research Fellow and Visiting Lecturer, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences University of Birmingham, UK.
  • 1999-2003: Research Associate in Political Geography, Department of Political Science, University of Trieste, Italy.

Professional Responsibilities

Situated at the complex intersection between power, territory and identity, Marco’s research has followed, in time, three major strands. In the early stages of his career, he explored the history and theory of Western geopolitical thought, studying in particular the U.S. geopolitical production of the 1940s and, more broadly, the Italian geopolitical tradition. Following this latter interest, he also investigated the colonial project of Fascist Italy in Ethiopia, analysing the ways in which Mussolini’s regime attempted to ‘write’ concepts of progress, order, hierarchy, and racial segregation on the Ethiopian urban/land-scape.

A second strand of Marco’s research, which originates from his second PhD thesis (University of Colorado at Boulder), relates more directly to the notion of territorial identities. In an epoch of rescaling of state powers and modes of economic production, his major research question aimed to understand whether or not a similar rescaling was also taking place with regard to traditional forms of collective identities (local, regional, national, and European) and to scrutinize their meanings.

Marco’s third and current research strand focuses on how ‘living together in diversity’ is imagined, narrated, organized, justified, and practiced within contemporary multicultural societies. As part of this broad research endeavour, he is interested in the re-making of national identities facing the increasing ethno-cultural diversity of national societies. After a large study on the ‘New Italians’ (supported by a FP7- Marie Curie CIG grant), Marco is now working on a British Academic/Leverhulme funded project which analyses the nation-race nexus among non-white Italians living in the UK.

Marco is the founder and convenor of the º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ Nationalism Network (LUNN).

Marco's teaching brings together his interest in the geographies of power, territory, identity and nationalism.

Recent Postgraduate Research Students

  • Panagiota Sotiropoulou (2019): Examining pre-service elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards immigrant students in Greece.
  • Leila Wilmers (2020): Nationalism as an engaged ideology: Negotiating dilemmas of national continuity in Russia
  • Thanachate Wisaijorn (2018): Beyond the territorial trap in International Relations: the transnationalism of the peoples in the Thai-Lao borderlands after the end of the Cold War.

Selected Publications