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Dr Nick Bingham

Profile summary

  • Central Academic Staff
  • Senior Lecturer in Geography
  • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
  • School of Social Sciences & Global Studies
  • Geography
  • nick.bingham

Professional biography

After seven years studying at the Department of Geography of the University of Bristol (first as an undergraduate then as a postgraduate), I worked for two years as a research associate at the University of Sheffield before moving to the OU in 1999. I am currently the Qualification Director for the OU's Environmental Studies degree.

Research interests

My research consists of an attempt (or rather a series of attempts) to explore the ‘challenging geographies’ that emerge once the social is not assumed to be a solely human construction.

This longstanding interest in taking seriously the socialites and spatialities of nonhumans has involved me in thinking through a series of empirical cases, always with an eye on the practices of coexistence through which the world is composed.  

Recently this has involved 

  • working with colleagues at the University of Exeter, the OU, and the University of Melbourne (Steve Hinchliffe, John Allen, Simon Carter, and Stephanie Lavau) on an ESRC-funded project that explored how biosecurity seeks to make life safe (http://www.biosecurity-borderlands.org);

whilst currently I am 

  • developing a project on 'reinventing the landscape of pollination' that explores what we can learn about care in the time of the Anthropocene from responses to the current bee crisis; and
  • working with colleagues at the OU (Gillian Rose, Matt Cook, Parvati Raghuram, Sophie Watson, and Oliver Zanetti) on an ESRC-funded project that explores 'smart cities in the making' using a case study of Milton Keynes.

All my work is informed by an ongoing effort to triangulate productively between certain threads of philosophical, science and technology studies (STS), and geographical literatures, in particular the thought of Annemarie Mol, John Law, Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, Michel Serres, Doreen Massey, and Jean Luc Nancy.

 

Teaching interests

I have played a key role in the production of a number of courses during my time at the OU including the interdisciplinary environment module U216, the innovative Geography module DD205 (Living in a Globalised World), and the influential Master's module D834 (Human Geography, Philosophy and Social Theory).  Most recently I co-chaired the production and am chairing the presentation of DST206 Environment: Sharing a dynamic planet that sits at the heart of the OU's Environmental Studies qualification Q99.  I am currently working with colleagues in Geography and Development towards a new module on Environment and Society (DD213).

Research groups

NameTypeParent Unit
OpenSpace Research CentreCentreFaculty of Social Sciences

Publications

Practices of attention, possibilities for care: Making situations matter in food safety inspection (2017-07-01)
Lavau, Stephanie and Bingham, Nick
The Sociological Review Monographs, 65(2) (pp. 20-35)

Biosecurity and the topologies of infected life: from borderlines to borderlands (2013-10)
Hinchliffe, Steve; Allen, John; Lavau, Stephanie; Bingham, Nick and Carter, Simon
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38(4) (pp. 531-543)

The object of regulation: tending the tensions of food safety (2012)
Bingham, Nick and Lavau, Stephanie
Environment and Planning A, 44(7) (pp. 1589-1606)

Biosecurity: spaces, practices, and boundaries (2008-07)
Bingham, Nick; Enticott, Gareth and Hinchliffe, Stephen
Environment and Planning A, 40(7) (pp. 1528-1533)

Reconstituting natures: Articulating other modes of living together (2008-01)
Bingham, Nick and Hinchliffe, Steve
Geoforum, 39(1) (pp. 83-87)

Slowing things down: Lessons from the GM controversy (2008-01)
Bingham, Nick
Geoforum, 39(1) (pp. 111-122)

Securing life: the emerging practices of biosecurity (2008)
Hinchliffe, Stephen and Bingham, Nick
Environment and Planning A, 40(7) (pp. 1534-1551)

Bees, butterflies, and bacteria: biotechnology and the politics of nonhuman friendship (2006-03)
Bingham, Nick
Environment and Planning A, 38(3) (pp. 483-498)

The digital generation?: Children, ICT and the everyday nature of social exclusion (2002-03)
Valentine, Gill; Holloway, Sarah and Bingham, Nick
Antipode, 34(2) (pp. 296-315)

Pathological Lives: Disease, Space and Biopolitics (2016-12-10)
Hinchliffe, Steve; Bingham, Nick; Allen, John and Carter, Simon
RGS-IBG Book Series
ISBN : 978-1-118-99759-8 | Publisher : John Wiley and Sons | Published : Chichester

People, animals and biosecurity in and through cities (2008-09-12)
Hinchliffe, Stephen and Bingham, Nick
In: Harris Ali, S. and Keil, Roger eds. Networked Disease: Emerging infections in the global city
ISBN : 1405161345 | Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell | Published : Oxford, UK

Mapping the multiplicities of biosecurity (2008)
Bingham, Nick and Hinchliffe, Stephen
In: Lakoff, Andrew and Collier, Stephen J. eds. Biosecurity Interventions (pp. 173-193)
ISBN : 978-0-231-14606-7 | Publisher : Columbia University Press | Published : New York

Sociotechnical (2005-06-24)
Bingham, Nick
In: Sibley, David; Jackson, Peter; Atkinson, David and Washbourne, Neil eds. Cultural Geography: a critical dictionary of key ideas. International Library of Human Geography (pp. 200-206)
ISBN : 1860647030 | Publisher : I.B. Tauris | Published : UK

In the belly of the monster: Frankenstein, food, factisches, and fiction (2002-05-01)
Bingham, Nick
In: Kitchin, Robert and Kneale, James eds. Lost in space: geographies of science fiction (pp. 180-192)
ISBN : 826457304 | Publisher : Continuum | Published : London, UK

Life around the screen: reframing young people’s use of the Internet (2001-08)
Bingham, N.; Valentine, G. and Holloway, S.
In: Watson, Nick and Cunningham-Burley, Sarah eds. Reframing the body. Explorations in sociology : British Sociological Association Conference volume series (pp. 228-243)
ISBN : 333774485 | Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan | Published : UK