• About

    Professor, Department of Geography, University of Washington

    Harry Bridges Endowed Chair in Labor Studies Emerita, University of Washington

    Adjunct Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies

    Affiliate of the Canadian Studies Center (Jackson School of International Studies), the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies & the West Coast Poverty Center.

     

    NOTE: I am not accepting new graduate students for the 2024/25 academic year

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    My undergraduate degree (Combined Studies) is from the University of Leicester, UK and my MA and PhD (both in Geography) are from the Ohio State University. Prior to coming to the University of Washington, I was at the University of Toronto. I teach classes on urban geography, the geographies of inequalities and feminist geographies.

    My research spans feminist, economic, social and political geographies, particularly in terms of the relationships between care, paid work and the home, and the interconnections between inequalities, social reproduction and the state, primarily in urban North America. I have a long-standing interest in the geographies of care, work and diversity, including the shifting contours of welfare, care migration and the meanings of home associated with neoliberal social policy reforms.

    My research is driven by questions about equality, social justice and the relationships between social reproduction, the state, labor markets, and discourses regarding collective versus individual responsibilities. In earlier projects I explored local clerical labor markets and the suburbanization of office work; the gendering of urban spaces and feminist urban politics; parents’ child care strategies and the experiences of live-in domestic workers and nannies. I have an ongoing interest in the interconnections between critical theories, epistemologies and research methods, including the politics and ethics of doing research.

  • RESEARCH

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    Global Migration of Care workers

    I explore various aspects of the globalization of care work and the ways this knits together the restructuring of care within nation-states, transnational migration and embodiment.  Care work is stratified by intersectionality, especially race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender and education. Through care work ‘local’ and transnational systems of gendered and racialized hierarchies, cultural representations and political-economic processes converge in the intimate spaces of bodies and homes as well as institutional settings.  I am exploring these ideas in the context of the politics and ethics of recruiting internationally trained nurses alongside the continued devaluing of low-wage domestic workers.

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    Homes, Bodies and Care

    In a series of papers, primarily written with Isabel Dyck (Geography, University of London, Queen Mary), I address the emergence of a neoliberal agenda for home care and on consequential discourses, practices and processes of care.  Our empirical work draws from an interdisciplinary project on the home as a site of long-term care in urban and rural locations across Ontario.  We investigate home care from the perspective of the paid home care workers – nurses, attendants, and personal support workers, as well as long-term care recipients and their family caregivers.  Isabel and I have framed our papers around the materialities of home, risk and care ethics, embodiment and body work, masculinities and migration.

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    Work, Employment and Workplace Diversity

    This research explores employment, home-work linkages and socio-economic change in large cities, the social and cultural dimensions of workplace dynamics and the organization of firms.  One strand is driven by questions of diversity, social justice and social policy aimed at the workplace.  Another strand involves the historical analysis of the constructions of urban femininities in North American white-collar workplaces in the context of social and technological change over the broad sweep of the 20th Century (this work was in collaboration with Kate Boyer, Planning and Geography, Cardiff University).

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     Cities and Urbanism

    I am a core and founding member of UW’s Cities Collaboratory (CitiesCollab). CitiesCollab explores the dynamic of cities primarily from social science and humanities perspectives. We developed the Lake Union Laboratory (LULab), a teaching and faculty-student research project focusing on one specific place within Seattle. The teaching component of our collaboration was featured in the UW 2014 Provost’s report on technology and teaching and some of our research appears as our Curating Collaborative Urban Research in the Digital Realm hosted by UW's Simpson Center for the Humanities. In 2015 the CitiesCollab became part of the university-wide initiative Urban@UW.

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  • TEACHING

    Geography 342: Geographies of Inequalities - Spring 2024

    Geography 476: Women and the City - 2024/2025

    Geography 541: Graduate Research Seminar - Feminist Geographies - 2024/2025

     

    GEOG 277: Geographies of Cities This course explores the economic, cultural, social and political dynamics of cities – their location and functions; and internal structure –including economic activities, housing and social geography. Particular emphasis is placed on the US and Canadian experience, although examples will be occasionally drawn from other regions of the world. Explores economic, cultural, social and political dynamics of cities - their location, functions, and internal structure, including economic activities, housing, and social geography. Topics include economic restructuring; suburbanization and urban sprawl; urban planning; inner-city gentrification; and how issues of class, race, and gender are embedded in the geographies of cities.

     

    GEOG 342: Geographies of Inequalities This course considers the geographies of social, political and economic inequalities. The focus will usually be on urban areas, although other spatial scales will also be examined. The course begins with discussions of the theoretical underpinning of ‘inequality’. The remainder of the course builds on these ideas by exploring topics such as the spatial distribution of wealth and poverty, and the geographies of exclusion and discrimination in employment and housing. Particular emphasis is placed on the US and Canadian experience, although some examples are drawn from other regions of the world.

     

    GEOG/GWSS 476: Women and the City (occasionally I teach GEOG 431: Gender and Geography) This course explores the reciprocal relations between gender relations, the layout of cities, and the activities of urban residents. Topics include: feminist theory and geography (women, gender, and the organization of space); women and urban poverty, housing and homelessness; paid employment; geographies of childcare; and women and urban politics. Particular emphasis is placed on the US and Canadian experience, although some examples are drawn from elsewhere.

     

    GEOG 490: The Seattle Region Capstone experience for upper-division students with previous coursework in urban geography and social science research methods. Studies how social/cultural, political, economic historical-geographies are created, sustained, or altered in urban areas, using the Seattle area as our focus. The course has two required components. Participation and leadership in a seminar-style discussion and other activities focusing on assigned readings, and a paper and online exhibit based on independent research project on the Lake Union area. One prior advanced course in qualitative or quantitative methods or research design, and one prior urban geography or inequality course is strongly recommended. Geography 315 is particularly recommended.

     

    GEOG/GWSS 541: Graduate Research Seminar: Feminist Geographies This graduate seminar explores major research themes in feminist geographies. Particular attention is given to the spatialities of gender identities and intersectionality. A typical seminar covers the history of feminist geography since the 1970s, current debates regarding appropriate methodologies in feminist geographies, and feminist geographers’ research around questions to do with the home, gendering everyday spaces, workplaces, the body, the nation and globalization.

     

    GEOG 577: Graduate Research Seminar: Urban Geography: Place, Inequality and Difference This seminar addresses questions of place, urban inequality and social difference with the aim of making sense of why urban inequalities persist and how they operate in and through cities and urban spaces. The role of community activism in American cities is addressed, as is the strategic engagement with existing structures of governance and public policies, along with the ongoing efforts to transform them.

     

    GEOG 525: Advanced Qualitative Methods (I teach this occasionally) Examines why and how qualitative methods can be used to pursue research in geography. Includes considerations of theoretical, ethical, and political issues that arise with qualitative methods. Offers practice in various methods such as ethnography, focus groups, interviewing, discourse and content analyses, narrative analysis, and archival analysis.

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  • Publications - Books

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    Child care policy, provision and funding has not kept up with the rapid increase in mothers in paid employment. Who Will Mind the Baby? (1996) explores how working mothers negotiate their responsibilities, and contrasts the limited child care policies of the United States and Canada with the situation in Europe and Australia.
    Click here for more information
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    Edited with Kevin Ward (University of Manchester), Neoliberalization (2007) engages with theoretical concerns and empirical interrogations of the multi-dimensional and multi-scalar processes of neoliberalization through a series of spatially and substantively diverse case studies written by scholars from across the social sciences.
    Click here for more information.

  • Publications - Recent Articles and Chapters

    A longer list of my publications can be found on ResearchGate and Academia.com

    • Kim England, Isabel Dyck, Iliana Ortega-Alcázar, and Menah Raven-Ellison (2020) “Health, well-being and migration,” in Anindita Datta, Peter Hopkins, Lynda Johnston, Elizabeth Olson, and Joseli Maria Silva (Eds.) The Routledge International handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies. Routledge: London and New York, pp. 336-346.
    • Kim England and Caitlin Alcorn (2018) "Growing care gaps, shrinking state? Home care workers and the Fair Labor Standards Act" Cambridge Journal of Regions Economy and Society, 11(3):443-457
    • Karin Schwiter, Kendra Strauss and Kim England (2018) “At home with the boss: Live-in elder care workers in Austria, Canada, Switzerland and the UK,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,43(3): 462-476
    • Kim England (2018) “Women in the Office: Clerical Work, Modernity and Workplaces” in Alexandra Staub (ed.) Routledge Companion to Modernity, Space and Modernity, Space and Gender, Routledge: New York, pp. 86-99.
    • Kim England (2017) "Home, Domestic Work and the State: The Spatial Politics of Domestic Workers Activism," Critical Social Policy, 37(3): 367-385.
    • Kim England and Kevin Ward (2016) “Theorizing Neoliberalization” in Simon Springer, Kean Birch and Julie MacLeavy (eds.) The Handbook of Neoliberalism. Routledge: London.
    • Kim England and Isabel Dyck (2016) “Global Care at Home: Transnational Care Workers Caring for Older People in Toronto,” in Katie Walsh and Lena NĂ€re (eds.) Transnational Migration and Home in Older Age. Routledge, pp. 227-239.
    • Kim England (2015) “Producing Feminist Geographies: Theory, Methodologies and Research Strategies,” in Stuart Aitkin and Gill Valentine (eds.) Approaches to Human Geography (2nd Edition), pp. 361-372.
    • Kim England (2015) “Nurses across borders: Global migration of Registered Nurses to the US” Gender Place and Culture, 22 (1), 143-156.
    • Kim England and Isabel Dyck (2014) “Masculinities, Embodiment and Care,” in Andrew Gorman-Murray and Peter Hopkins (eds.) Masculinities and Place, Ashgate, pp. 285-297.
    • Kim England (2014) “Women, Intersectionality and Workplace Equity” in Carol AgĂłcs (ed.) Employment Equity in Canada: The Legacy of the Abella Report, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 71-98.
    • Kim England and Caitlin Henry (2013) “Care, migration and citizenship: Nurse Migration to the UK” Social and Cultural Geography, 14(5): 558-574. [pdf]
    • Kim England (2013) “Clerical Work” in Vicki Smith (ed.) Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia, Sage.
    • Kim England and Isabel Dyck (2012) “Migrant Workers in Home Care: Responsibilities, Routes and Respect” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101 (5): 1076-1083. [pdf]
    • Kim England (2012) “‘Everyday Life is Situated’: Politics, Space and Feminist Theory” in Andrew Jonas and Andrew Wood (eds) Territory, The State and Urban Politics: New Critical Directions, Ashgate: Burlington, VT, pp. 187-202.
    • Isabel Dyck and Kim England (2012) “Homes for Care: Reconfiguring Care Relations and Practices” in Christine Ceci, Kristin Bjornsdottir and Mary Ellen Purkis (eds.) Home, Care, Practices: Critical Perspectives on Care at Home for Older People. Routledge: New York, pp. 62-77. [pdf]
    • Kim England (2011) “Spatial stories: Belltown, Denny Hill and Pike Place Market” contribution to “Social Geographies” chapter in Michael Brown and Richard L. Morrill (Eds) Seattle Geographies. Seattle: UW Press, pp. 144-150.
    • Kim England and Isabel Dyck (2011) “Managing the Body Work of Home Care” themed issue ‘Body Work’ in Sociology of Health and Illness, 33 (2): 206-219. [pdf]
    • Kim England (2010) “Home, Paid Care Work and Geographies of Responsibilities”, special issue on ‘Care-full Geographies’ Ethics, Place and Environment, 13(2): 131-150. [pdf]
    • Kim England and Kate Boyer (2009) “Women’s Work: The Feminization and Shifting Meanings of Clerical Work” Journal of Social History, 43(2): 307-340. [pdf]
    • Kate Boyer and Kim England (2008) “Gender, Work and Technology in the Information Workplace: From Typewriters to ATMs” Social and Cultural Geography, 9 (3): 241-256. [pdf]
    • Kim England (2008) “Welfare Provision, Welfare Reform, Welfare Mothers,” in Kevin Cox, Murray Low and Jennifer Robinson (eds.) Handbook of Political Geography, Sage: London and Thousand Oaks, CA. [pdf]

     

    Some older papers of note:

    • Kim England (2003) "Disabilities, Gender and Employmwnt: Social Exclusion, Employment Equity and Canadian Banking,” The Canadian Geographer, 47(4): 429-450. [pdf]
    • Bernadette Stiell and Kim England (1997) "Domestic Distinctions: Constructing Difference among paid Domestic Workers in Toronto,” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 4(3): 339-359. (reprinted in Michael S. Kimmel, Amy Aronson, and Amy Kaler (eds.) The Gendered Society Reader, 2007, Oxford University Press). [pdf]
    • Kim England and Bernadette Stiell (1997) "'They think you're as stupid as your English is': Constructing Foreign Domestic Workers in Toronto,” Environment and Planning A, 29(2): 195-215. (reprinted in Pamela Moss and Karen Falconer Al-Hindi (eds.) Feminisms in Geography: Rethinking Space, Place and Knowledges, 2007, Rowman and Littlefield). [pdf]
    • Kim England (1995) "'Girls in the Office': Job Search and Recruiting in a Local Clerical Labor Market,” Environment and Planning A, 27(12): 1995-2018. [pdf]
    • Kim England (1993) "Suburban Pink Collar Ghettos: The Spatial Entrapment of Women?” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 83(2): 225-242 (and see the exchange with Susan Hanson and Geraldine Pratt, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1994, 84(3): 500-504). [pdf]
    • Kim England (1994) "Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality and Feminist Research,” The Professional Geographer, 46(1): 80-89. (reprinted in Trevor Barnes and Derek Gregory (eds.) Reading Human Geography: The Poetics and Politics of Inquiry, 1997, Edward Arnold AND reprinted in Harald Bauder and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro (eds.) Critical Geography: An Introduction and Reader, Praxis(e)Press.) [pdf]
    • Kim England (1991) "Gender Relations and the Spatial Structure of the City," Geoforum, 1991, 22(2): 135-147. [pdf]

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    In the Media

  • Contact

    Department of Geography
    Smith Hall
    Box 353560
    University of Washington
    Seattle, WA 98195-3560
    Email: england [at] uw.edu

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