Professor Jon May
Professor of Geography, Deputy Head of School, Director of Research

School of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Phone: 020 7882 8925
Fax: 020 7882 7032
Email: j.may@qmul.ac.uk

External Positions

Editor (Social Geography) Geography Compass

Editorial Board Social and Cultural Geography

Member, ESRC Peer Review College 2010 -

Member, External Advisory Board for Ethical Review, Centre for Housing Studies, University of York

External Examiner, DD304 Understanding Cities, Open University

Teaching

GEG 5110, GEG 5705  Society, Culture and Space
GEG 5112, GEG 6112 Urban Futures: Los Angeles and Las Vegas

GEG 7106 Culture, Space and Power
GEG 7105 Cities, Empire and Modernity

Research interests:

I am a social and cultural geographer with a particular interest in (global) cities. My work uses an ethnographic approach to explore questions of inequality and social justice in an era of rapid urban change, social and economic restructuring and welfare reform. Substantively, my research focuses upon two key issues: the geographies of street homelessness, and low-paid migrant labour .

On the first of these issues, I have explored the life histories of homeless people; constructions of the homeless subject as peculiarly and threateningly mobile; and homeless people’s own experiences of movement and of place. More recently, work with Professor Paul Cloke (University of Exeter) and Sarah Johnsen (Herriot Watt) has sought to extend narrow accounts of street homelessness in a  ‘revanchist’ era, exploring instead the various and complex experiences of and responses to street homelessness in a period of urban restructuring and neo-liberal welfare ‘reform’ to examine the changing geographies of homeless service provision; the geographies and ethics of voluntarism; and homeless people’s own understandings of voluntary service spaces and of the streets. In relation to my second major area of interest, work with colleagues (Jane Wills, Cathy McIlwaine, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans and Jo Herbert) in the Global Cities at Work team at Queen Mary has explored the practices and politics of ‘travelling neoliberalism’ – charting the processes behind and formation of a distinctive ‘migrant division of labour’ in the London low-wage economy, the diverse experiences of low-paid migrant workers themselves, and the politics attendant to such divisions. Outputs and further details of each of these projects can be found below:

www.homeless-research.org.
Global Cities at Work

Publications:

Swept Up Lives

Global Cities at work

Cultural Geography in Practice

timespace

Virtual Geographies

Selected Publications

Books

Cloke, P., May, J., Johnsen, S. (2010) Swept up Lives? Re-envisioning the homeless city. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. 280pp.

Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J. and McIlwaine,  C. (2010) Global Cities at Work: New migrant divisions of  labour. Pluto Press, London. 288pp.

Blunt, A., Gruffudd, P., May, J., Ogborn, M. and Pinder, D. (eds) (2003) Practising Cultural Geography. London, Arnold. 330pp.

May, J. and Thrift, N. (eds) (2001) TimeSpace: geographies of temporality. London, Routledge. 323pp.

Crang, M., Crang, P. and May, J. (eds) (1999) Virtual Geographies: bodies, space, relations. London, Routledge. 322pp.

 
Journal Papers and Book Chapters (2005-)

Geographies of Homelessness
May, J. (forthcoming, 2012) ‘Exclusion’ in Cloke, P., Crang, P. and Goodwin, M. (eds) Introducing Human Geography (3rd Edition). London, Arnold.

Devertueil, G., May, J., and Von Mahs, J. (2009) ‘Complexity not collapse: recasting geographies of homelessness in a ‘punitive age’’, Progress in Human Geography 33 (5): 646–666.

May, J. ‘Homelessness’, in Kitchin, R. and Thrift, N. (eds) (2009) International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, London. Pp. 185–190.

Johnsen, S., May, J. and Cloke, P. (2008) ‘Imag(in)ing homeless places: Using auto-photography to (re)examine the geographies of homelessness’, Area 40 (2): 194–207.

Cloke, P. May, J. and Johnsen, S. (2008) ‘Performativity and affect in the homeless city’, Environment and Planning: Society and Space 26 (2): 241–263.

May, J. (2008) ‘Of Nomads and Vagrants: Single Homelessness and Narratives of Home as Place’, in Oakes, T. S. and Price, P.L. (eds) The Cultural Geography Reader. Routledge, London: pp. 334–342.

Cloke, P., Johnsen, S. and May, J. (2007) ‘The periphery of care: emergency services for homeless people in rural areas’, Journal of Rural Studies 23: 387–401.

May, J., Johnsen, S. and Cloke, P. (2007) ‘Alternative cartographies of homelessness: rendering visible British women’s experiences of ‘visible’ homelessness’, Gender, Place and Culture 14 (2) 121–40.

Cloke, P. Johnsen, S. and May, J. (2007) ‘Ethical citizenship? Volunteers and the ethics of providing services for homeless people’, Geoforum 38: 1089–1101.

May, J., Cloke, P., and Johnsen, S. (2006) ‘Shelter at the margins: New Labour and the changing state of emergency accommodation for single homeless people in Britain’, Policy and Politics 34 (4): 711–30.

May, J. and Cloke, P. (2006) ‘Homelessness’, in Warf, B. (ed) The Encyclopaedia of Human Geography. Sage, London. pp. 226–7.

Cloke, P. and May, J. (2006) ‘Home’, Warf, B. (ed) The Encyclopaedia of Human Geography. Sage, London. pp. 225–6.

May, J., Johnsen, S. and Cloke, P. (2005) 'Re-phasing neo-liberalism: New Labour and Britain's crisis of street homelessness', Antipode 37 (4): 703–30.

May, J. (2005) ‘Exclusion’ in Cloke, P., Crang, P. and Goodwin, M. (eds) Introducing Human Geography (2nd Edition). London, Arnold. Pp. 411–24.

Cloke, P., Johnsen., S. and May, J. (2005) ‘Exploring ethos? Discourses of charity in the provision of emergency services for homeless people’, Environment and Planning A 37 (3): 385–402.

Johnsen, S., Cloke, P., and May, J. (2005) ‘Day centres for homeless people: spaces of care or fear?’, Social and Cultural Geography 6 (6): 787–811.

Johnsen, S. Cloke, P., and May, J. (2005) ‘Transitory spaces of care: serving homeless people on the street’, Health and Place 11 (4): 323–36.

Low-Paid Migrant Labour
Datta, K., McIlwaine, C., Herbert, J., Evans, Y., May, J. and Wills, J. (2011) ‘Global workers for global cities: low paid migrant labour in London’, in Taylor, P., Derudder, B., Hoyler, M. and Witlox, F. (2011) International Handbook of Globalisation and World Cities. Edward Elgar, London.

May, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., McIlwaine, C. and Wills, J. (2010) ‘Migrant workers and the global city’, Sociology Review 20 (2): 13–16.

May, J., Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J. and McIlwaine, C. (2010) ‘Global Cities at Work: Migrant labour in low paid employment in London’, The London Journal 35 (1) 85–99.

Datta, D., McIlwaine, C., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J. and Wills,  J. (2010) ‘A migrant ethic of care’ Negotiating care and caring among migrant workers in London’s low pay economy?, Feminist Review 94: 93–116.

Wills, J., Datta, K., McIlwaine, C., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., and May,  J. (2010) ‘Immigration, local regional and uneven  development’, in Pike, A., Rodriguez-Pose, A. and Tomaney, J. (eds)  Routledge Handbook of Local and Regional Development. Routledge, London. Pp. 449–459.

Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J. and McIlwaine,  C. (2010) ‘New migrant divisions of labour’, in Coe, N. and  Jones, A. (eds) The Economic Geography of the UK. Sage, London. Pp. 225–238.

Datta, D., McIlwaine, C., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J. and Wills,  J. (2009) ‘Men on the move? Embodied narratives of migration  and work among low paid men in London’, Social and Cultural Geography 10 (8): 853–873.

Wills, J., May, J. Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J. and  McIlwaine,  C. (2009) ‘London’s migrant division of labour’, European  Urban and Regional Studies 3: 257–271.

Wills, K., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J. and McIlwaine,  C. (2009) ‘Religion at work: The role of faith-based  organizations in the London living wage campaign’, Cambridge Journal  of Regions, Economy and Society 2 (3); 443–461.

May, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., McIlwaine, C. and Wills, J. (2008) ‘Travelling neoliberalism: Polish and Ghanaian migrant workers in London’, in Smith, A., Stenning, A. and Willis, K. (eds) Social Justice and Neoliberalism: Global perspectives, London, Zed. Pp. 61–89.

Herbert, J., May, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., McIlwaine, C. and Wills, J. (2008) ‘Multicultural living? Experiences of everyday racism amongst Ghanaian migrants in London’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 15 (2): 103–17.

May, J., Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J. and McIlwaine, C. (2007) ‘Keeping London working: global cities, the British state, and London’s new migrant division of labour’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32: 151–67.

Datta, K., McIlwaine, C., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J. and Wills, J. (2007) ‘From coping strategies to tactics: London’s low-pay economy and migrant labour’ British Journal of Industrial Relations 45 (2): 404–32.

Datta, K., McIlwaine, C., Wills, J., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., and May, J. (2007) ‘The new development finance or exploiting migrant labour? Remittance sending among low-paid migrant workers in London’, International Development Planning Review, 29 (1) 43–67.

Evans, Y. Wills, J., Datta, K., Herbert, J., McIlwaine, C. and May, J. (2007) ‘‘Subcontracting by stealth’ in London’s hotels: impacts and implementation for labour organising’, Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society 10: 85–98.

Examples of research funding:

Total funding secured (Pre FEC): £423, 120