Mobility and Social Justice

Today, our growing global inequality is often underwritten by unequal mobilities. Groups marked by gender, race, class, location or disability often encounter significant barriers to mobility, whether in carrying out everyday routines, accessing key resources, or connecting with others. Meanwhile, as technology, infrastructures and political landscapes continue to change, we are faced both with new means of mobility and new forms of exclusion and immobility. Faced with such transformations, scholars working on transport, and within geography more generally, have called for a closer dialogue between work on transport and mobility justice and work concerned with broader questions of social justice.

Seminars will be delivered on Tuesdays in weeks 2, 4, 6 & 8 of Hilary Term (January-March) 2018, 4-6pm at the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford.

For more information on this seminar series, please contact

Week 2: 4-6pm, Tuesday, 23 January 2018 | Beckit Room, SoGE

Mobilities, livelihoods and the 'right to the city' in the lives of older people in Ghana and Uganda

  • Dr Ross Wignall, Oxford Brookes University
  • Dr Katie McQuaid, University of Leeds
  • Chair: Dr Tim Schwanen
  • Listen to podcast [MP3: 117.6MB / 1:23:44 hours]

The first TSU Seminar of 2018 took place on 23 Janurary and featured a joint talk by Dr Katie McQuaid of the University of Leeds and Dr Ross Wignall of Oxford Brookes University.

Together Katie and Ross explored how questions of social justice played out in the everyday lives of ageing populations in Sub-Saharan Africa, where older people make up a small but often-overlooked part of the population. Focusing on Ghana and Uganda they illustrated how typical life trajectories are changing: where people could once expect to be cared for by their family as they aged, changing patterns of urbanisation, family dispersal and insecure livelihoods have come to mean that many older people have found themselves without the support they anticipated in their old age. In this context, they explored how older people are finding new ways of forging inter-generational solidarity, navigating the challenges of daily life, and claiming a 'right to the city' for themselves.

Week 4: 4-6pm, Tuesday, 6 February 2018 | Beckit Room, SoGE

Mobility and social justice: implications from the future sharing economy

  • Prof Geoff Vigar, Newcastle University
  • Amanda Rowlatt, Department for Transport
  • Chair: Dr Brendan Doody
Week 6: 4-6pm, Tuesday, 20 February 2018 | Beckit Room, SoGE

Pedestrian mobilities, everyday territories, and the 'good enough city'

  • Dr Robin Smith, Cardiff University
  • Dennis Donovan, Cardiff Council HANR Outreach
  • Chair: Dr Jennie Middleton
POSTPONED | Week 8: 4-6pm, Tuesday, 6 March 2018 | Beckit Room, SoGE

Mobility justice: gender and generation

  • Dr Lesley Murray, University of Brighton
  • Holly Wier, Greater London Authority and University of Westminster
  • Chair: Dr Farhan Samanani