Peter Adey

Peter Adey's work lies at the intersection between space, security and mobility, and the blurring boundaries between Cultural and Political Geography.

He has been exploring these themes since his doctoral research at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth to develop three closely related research agendas at the airport/border; the vertical territorial and material spaces of air; and the political and technological spaces of emergency and evacuation. Through these agendas Professor Adey has helped to forward and develop a ‘new mobilities’ turn or paradigm within the arts and social sciences which has seen his book Mobility become one of the standard texts in many courses on mobilities and communications, and Aerial Life one of the first monographs to take the aerial world to task through its geopolitical discourses, biopolitical and governmental formations of power, and its intimate geographies of emotion and affect.

He has written widely on travel and transport histories and futures, the politics of emergency, and the cultures of the military - especially in the context of aviation and air-power. Among other works he is author of Aerial Life (2010), From Above (eds, 2013) and Air (2014). He leads an interdisciplinary Masters programme at Royal Holloway in Geopolitics and Security, and part of the large scale research project 'Living in the Mobility Transition'.