Mitch Rose
BA, Middle East History, University of Wisconsin, 1992 MA, International Relations, Syracuse University 1996 MA, Geography, Syracuse University 1998 PhD, Geography, Cambridge 2003
Reader
Deputy Head of the Graduate School
Senior Lecturer in Human Geography
Department of Geography and Earth Sciences
Contact Details
- Email: mir24@aber.ac.uk
- ORCID: 0000-0002-0695-3633
- Office: K4, Llandinam Building
- Phone: +44 (0) 1970 622582
- Research Portal Profile
Profile
I am a cultural geographer with broad research interests in cultural theory, material culture and landscape. Over the last decade, I have become particularly interested in what might be called the existential dimension of social life. Drawing upon Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida and Zizek, my interest is in exploring the existential conditions that lacerate, subvert, and incapacitate human willing; conditions which cannot be equated with nor resolved by relations of power but nonetheless profoundly shape social phenomenon, events and spaces. This interest has distilled into a number of distinct but related strands of research which I describe below.
Teaching
Module Coordinator
- GS20410 - Concepts for Geographers
- PGM0810 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0810)
- PGM0210 - Principles of Research Design
- PGM0720 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0720)
- GGM1320 - Contemporary Debates in Social and Spatial Theory
- GS14220 - Place and Identity
Tutor
- PGM2310 - Research Skills and Personal Development (Science) (2310)
- GGM1320 - Contemporary Debates in Social and Spatial Theory
- PGM0210 - Principles of Research Design
- GS14220 - Place and Identity
- PGM2210 - Research Skills and Personal Development (Arts and Humanities) (2210)
- GS20410 - Concepts for Geographers
- PGM0720 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0720)
- PGM0810 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0810)
Coordinator
- PGM0720 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0720)
- GGM1320 - Contemporary Debates in Social and Spatial Theory
- GS14220 - Place and Identity
- PGM0210 - Principles of Research Design
- GS20410 - Concepts for Geographers
- PGM0810 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0810)
Lecturer
- PGM0810 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0810)
- PGM4420 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (1120)
- DA34040 - Traethawd Estynedig Daearyddiaeth
- GS34040 - Geography Dissertation
- PGM0720 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0720)
- PGM4210 - Principles of Research Design
- GS21520 - Human Geography Research Design and Fieldwork Skills
- PGM4005 - Ethics, Plagiarism and Academic Practice for Research Students
Attendance Dept Admin
- PGM0720 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0720)
- PGM2010 - Specialist Research Skills for scientists
- PGM6510 - Critical Commentary in Practice-Based Research
- PGM1010 - Quantitative Data Collection and Analysis (for social scientists)
- PGM0810 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0810)
- PGM8110 - How to Organise a Conference
- PGM1810 - Ways of Working
- PGM2810 - Skills in Bioinformatics for Biologists
- PGM3610 - Texts that made the Middle Ages: Latin for postgraduates
- PGM0210 - Principles of Research Design
- PGM5410 - Research Seminar Skills in Physical Sciences
- PGM6310 - Subject Specific Research Skills
- PGM6410 - Writing your first Journal Article
Blackboard Dept Admin
- PGM0720 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0720)
- PGM6510 - Critical Commentary in Practice-Based Research
- PGM8110 - How to Organise a Conference
- PGM2010 - Specialist Research Skills for scientists
- PGM6410 - Writing your first Journal Article
- PGM1010 - Quantitative Data Collection and Analysis (for social scientists)
- PGM1810 - Ways of Working
- PGM3610 - Texts that made the Middle Ages: Latin for postgraduates
- PGM5410 - Research Seminar Skills in Physical Sciences
- PGM0810 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis (0810)
- PGM2810 - Skills in Bioinformatics for Biologists
- PGM0210 - Principles of Research Design
- PGM6310 - Subject Specific Research Skills
Research
Negative Geographies: over the last two decades, contemporary cultural geography has championed the emancipatory potential of the affirmative. Drawing upon thinkers such as Nietzsche, Deleuze, Haraway, Spinoza, Latour, Negri and others, these ontologies emphasise creativity, relationality and a generative capacity imminent to a living world; a world whose nature is thought to be vital, open, plastic and becoming. My interest in the negative stems from those thresholds of living that withdraw from relationality and refuse to become. While conditions like hunger, disease, lethargy and pain can be understood through a lens of positive relationality, to do so misses something essential about their nature and the manner in which they shadow the problem of being a living being. This concern operates as a red thread throughout my work, whether it be on culture, governmentality, indigeneity, democracy or heritage landscapes in Egypt.
The Question of Culture: I have a long-standing interest in rehabilitating the culture concept from its current condition of intellectual penury. The key problem with the way culture has been theorised is that it stood as a placeholder for the problem of difference. The aim of my work has been to emancipate the concept from these constraints by arguing that difference is essentially unknowable. While difference is an obvious and empirical fact of life, emerging and receding at various scales, the nature of difference itself defies explanation. Yet rather than seeing this as an obstacle to theorising culture, my work uses it as an invitation to think culture differently: culture not as an explanation for difference but as an elucidation of a phenomenon I term ‘claiming’. This project culminated in my recent monograph Dreams of Presence: a Geographic Theory of Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2024).