Gemma Sou
Biographic Data
| ID | 954457 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gemma Sou |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gemma |
| FAMILY NAME | Sou |
| SIGNATURE | SOU G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8434-2723 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 104 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
A place-based framework to understand family disaster recovery
This paper develops a place based framework to explain how families recover from disasters. Using longitudinal patchwork ethnography in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria it proposes that family recovery is determined by a dynamic interplay between ‘etic facilitators’ (recovery assistance, public infrastructure, labour markets and social assistance, and market dynamics) and ‘emic facilitators’ (families' resources and subjective recovery prior…
Downplaying extreme heat
This paper explores how extreme heat is spatially and temporally imagined and how such imaginaries shape individual adaptation. It draws on a five month ethnography in Manchester – a temperate Global North city. I introduce ‘relative invulnerability’, a perceptual framework in which essentialist global imaginaries position extreme heat as a problem of the ‘Other’, often in the Global South, while temperate Global North contexts are equated with m…
Worldmaking the Global Climate Order
Small island developing states (SIDS) are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis yet have been marginalized within the global climate regime. Often overlooked in this story are their purposeful efforts to reform global climate governance in ways that increase the self-determination of all states over their climate futures. Drawing on interviews with senior civil servants in Antigua and Barbuda, alongside recent scholarship in political…
Climate adaptation under austerity
Postcolonial experiences of Chinese aid
This paper explores how public servants in aid‐recipient countries perceive and encounter the development structures and normative discourses of South–South partnerships. The paper draws on interviews with senior public servants in the Antigua and Barbuda government who interface directly with Chinese aid delivery. The public servants perceive that ‘Northern’ development models have largely failed and that ‘Southern’ donors can facilitate alterna…
Wiley Lecture 2022. Communicating climate change with comics
Drawing on my experience with creative research translation, in this work I discuss how comics provide several possibilities to communicate climate change using geographical analysis and anti‐essentialist representations. Comics can be deployed as a multi‐modal method that encourages researchers to use thick description to communicate embodied, intangible, and hidden experiences of life with climate change that are difficult to capture in other w…
Comics and Zines for Creative Research Impact
We contribute to critical debates about the ethics, politics and praxis of research impact by drawing on our experiences of translating research into a comic and a zine. We demonstrate how comics and zines construct ethical and nuanced depictions of socio-politically marginalised groups, moving away from ‘damage centred’ research frameworks. Comics and zines enable readers to access places and moments that other mediums are less able to, and they…
Waiting during disasters
Always spatial, waiting time is the observation of past‐present‐future, and temporality is the condition of being bounded by time. Both are mechanisms of state governance that control how and when families recover from rapid‐onset humanitarian disasters. Analysing these spatio‐temporalities reveals how families leverage resources to engage in acts of resilience that challenge the state’s spatio‐temporal control of recovery. A case study focuses o…
Un/making the 'sensory home
In this paper, we further develop the notion of the ‘sensory home’. We reveal how gustatory, olfactory and sonic experiences shape where and when one feels ‘at home’. We draw on a qualitative, longitudinal methodology to explore how low-income Puerto Ricans experienced domestic tastescapes, smellscapes and soundscapes during the first 12 months after Hurricane Maria in 2017. We first show how the sensory home is made with familiar and routine sen…
Climate change and Sids in the transpacific region
This article will discuss how the impacts of climate change are shaping the flows of people, capital and goods within the transpacific region. These flows are intimately shaped by the geographies and colonial histories of transpacific small island developing states, as well as the migratory patterns and diaspora communities of small island developing states. Findings are drawn from 12 months of ethnographic research, which explored the recovery o…
Shifts to Global Development
This special section on global development has been developed from a conference roundtable event run by the Development Geographies Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society. In this special section, we (some of the committee) introduce the four papers and their critical contributions to emerging debates. These extend early work on how the “global” is being made, focusing on the projects of multilateral development agencies and state insti…
Reframing resilience as resistance
This paper challenges resilience literature, which often strips grassroots actors of their political agency and reduces their resilient actions to no more than adapting, mitigating or recovering from an exogenous hazard. I apply an everyday resistance framework to unpack Puerto Ricans’ responses to the impacts of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the Caribbean Island in 2017. This methodological approach situates acts of resilience within the col…
Aid micropolitics
Aid partnerships between global north and global south institutions are critiqued for maintaining colonial knowledge politics and restricting the participation of southern development experts. This paper draws on lifework interviews with senior civil servants within the Antigua and Barbuda government to explore how southern development experts subvert the development hierarchies that permeate partnership micropolitics. The paper first reveals how…
A multidimensional framework for disaster recovery
After Maria by Gemma Sou and John Cei Douglas
Preview this article: After Maria by Gemma Sou and John Cei Douglas, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/stic/12/1/stic.12.1.129-1.gif
Concealing researcher identity in fieldwork and social media
Researchers often conceal or reveal parts of their identity to ensure the success of fieldwork. Yet, connection between researchers and research participants can now be maintained via social networking sites. This raises new questions about the ethics and practicalities of negotiating identity during and after fieldwork. The paper draws on a narrative ethnography of concealing my lesbian identity during and after ethnographic research in Bolivia.…
Sustainable resilience? Disaster recovery and the marginalization of sociocultural needs and concerns
Resilience has become the dominant and normative ideology of sustainability more generally, and disaster recovery more specifically. Most studies focus on how to achieve resilient recovery. This is premised on an assumption that resilience meets the needs and concerns of disaster-affected populations and is thereby sustainable. However, this article critically explores to what extent the recovery needs and concerns of disaster-affected households…
Disruption and recovery of intangible resources during environmental crises
Household self-blame for disasters
The most important theoretical argument concerning decentralised participatory governance is that it can make a government more accountable for the needs of the governed. Key to this process are participatory spaces that act as mechanisms for dialogue between citizens and local government. However, within Cochabamba, a city in the centre of Bolivia, South America, 'at-risk' citizens engage minimally with disaster risk issues in participatory spac…
Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) , directed and produced by Gianfranco Rosi (Italy). 2016, 114 minutes. Italian with English subtitles. Webpage
"Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare), directed and produced by Gianfranco Rosi (Italy). 2016, 114 minutes. Italian with English subtitles. Webpage: http://www.fireatsea.com/." Nationalities Papers, 46(2), pp. 335–336
Trivial pursuits? Serious (video) games and the media representation of refugees
This article critically analyses the representational practices of serious (video) games that focus on refugees. It argues that the technological form of serious games can simulate the historical, political and socio-economic factors that shape why refugees leave their home country and their experiences when travelling to host countries. They are able to mobilise intellectual agendas which challenge the de-contextualised representations of refuge…
Reframing resilience as resistance
This paper challenges resilience literature, which often strips grassroots actors of their political agency and reduces their resilient actions to no more than adapting, mitigating or recovering from an exogenous hazard. I apply an everyday resistance framework to unpack Puerto Ricans’ responses to the impacts of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the Caribbean Island in 2017. This methodological approach situates acts of resilience within the col…
Un/making the 'sensory home
In this paper, we further develop the notion of the ‘sensory home’. We reveal how gustatory, olfactory and sonic experiences shape where and when one feels ‘at home’. We draw on a qualitative, longitudinal methodology to explore how low-income Puerto Ricans experienced domestic tastescapes, smellscapes and soundscapes during the first 12 months after Hurricane Maria in 2017. We first show how the sensory home is made with familiar and routine sen…
Disruption and recovery of intangible resources during environmental crises
Comics and Zines for Creative Research Impact
We contribute to critical debates about the ethics, politics and praxis of research impact by drawing on our experiences of translating research into a comic and a zine. We demonstrate how comics and zines construct ethical and nuanced depictions of socio-politically marginalised groups, moving away from ‘damage centred’ research frameworks. Comics and zines enable readers to access places and moments that other mediums are less able to, and they…
Aid micropolitics
Aid partnerships between global north and global south institutions are critiqued for maintaining colonial knowledge politics and restricting the participation of southern development experts. This paper draws on lifework interviews with senior civil servants within the Antigua and Barbuda government to explore how southern development experts subvert the development hierarchies that permeate partnership micropolitics. The paper first reveals how…
A multidimensional framework for disaster recovery
Sustainable resilience? Disaster recovery and the marginalization of sociocultural needs and concerns
Resilience has become the dominant and normative ideology of sustainability more generally, and disaster recovery more specifically. Most studies focus on how to achieve resilient recovery. This is premised on an assumption that resilience meets the needs and concerns of disaster-affected populations and is thereby sustainable. However, this article critically explores to what extent the recovery needs and concerns of disaster-affected households…
Concealing researcher identity in fieldwork and social media
Researchers often conceal or reveal parts of their identity to ensure the success of fieldwork. Yet, connection between researchers and research participants can now be maintained via social networking sites. This raises new questions about the ethics and practicalities of negotiating identity during and after fieldwork. The paper draws on a narrative ethnography of concealing my lesbian identity during and after ethnographic research in Bolivia.…
Household self-blame for disasters
The most important theoretical argument concerning decentralised participatory governance is that it can make a government more accountable for the needs of the governed. Key to this process are participatory spaces that act as mechanisms for dialogue between citizens and local government. However, within Cochabamba, a city in the centre of Bolivia, South America, 'at-risk' citizens engage minimally with disaster risk issues in participatory spac…
Postcolonial experiences of Chinese aid
This paper explores how public servants in aid‐recipient countries perceive and encounter the development structures and normative discourses of South–South partnerships. The paper draws on interviews with senior public servants in the Antigua and Barbuda government who interface directly with Chinese aid delivery. The public servants perceive that ‘Northern’ development models have largely failed and that ‘Southern’ donors can facilitate alterna…
Waiting during disasters
Always spatial, waiting time is the observation of past‐present‐future, and temporality is the condition of being bounded by time. Both are mechanisms of state governance that control how and when families recover from rapid‐onset humanitarian disasters. Analysing these spatio‐temporalities reveals how families leverage resources to engage in acts of resilience that challenge the state’s spatio‐temporal control of recovery. A case study focuses o…
Shifts to Global Development
This special section on global development has been developed from a conference roundtable event run by the Development Geographies Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society. In this special section, we (some of the committee) introduce the four papers and their critical contributions to emerging debates. These extend early work on how the “global” is being made, focusing on the projects of multilateral development agencies and state insti…
Trivial pursuits? Serious (video) games and the media representation of refugees
This article critically analyses the representational practices of serious (video) games that focus on refugees. It argues that the technological form of serious games can simulate the historical, political and socio-economic factors that shape why refugees leave their home country and their experiences when travelling to host countries. They are able to mobilise intellectual agendas which challenge the de-contextualised representations of refuge…
After Maria by Gemma Sou and John Cei Douglas
Preview this article: After Maria by Gemma Sou and John Cei Douglas, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/stic/12/1/stic.12.1.129-1.gif
Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) , directed and produced by Gianfranco Rosi (Italy). 2016, 114 minutes. Italian with English subtitles. Webpage
"Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare), directed and produced by Gianfranco Rosi (Italy). 2016, 114 minutes. Italian with English subtitles. Webpage: http://www.fireatsea.com/." Nationalities Papers, 46(2), pp. 335–336
Trivial pursuits? Serious (video) games and the media representation of refugees
This article critically analyses the representational practices of serious (video) games that focus on refugees. It argues that the technological form of serious games can simulate the historical, political and socio-economic factors that shape why refugees leave their home country and their experiences when travelling to host countries. They are able to mobilise intellectual agendas which challenge the de-contextualised representations of refuge…
Sustainable resilience? Disaster recovery and the marginalization of sociocultural needs and concerns
Resilience has become the dominant and normative ideology of sustainability more generally, and disaster recovery more specifically. Most studies focus on how to achieve resilient recovery. This is premised on an assumption that resilience meets the needs and concerns of disaster-affected populations and is thereby sustainable. However, this article critically explores to what extent the recovery needs and concerns of disaster-affected households…
Disruption and recovery of intangible resources during environmental crises
Household self-blame for disasters
The most important theoretical argument concerning decentralised participatory governance is that it can make a government more accountable for the needs of the governed. Key to this process are participatory spaces that act as mechanisms for dialogue between citizens and local government. However, within Cochabamba, a city in the centre of Bolivia, South America, 'at-risk' citizens engage minimally with disaster risk issues in participatory spac…
Aid micropolitics
Aid partnerships between global north and global south institutions are critiqued for maintaining colonial knowledge politics and restricting the participation of southern development experts. This paper draws on lifework interviews with senior civil servants within the Antigua and Barbuda government to explore how southern development experts subvert the development hierarchies that permeate partnership micropolitics. The paper first reveals how…
A multidimensional framework for disaster recovery
After Maria by Gemma Sou and John Cei Douglas
Preview this article: After Maria by Gemma Sou and John Cei Douglas, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/stic/12/1/stic.12.1.129-1.gif
Concealing researcher identity in fieldwork and social media
Researchers often conceal or reveal parts of their identity to ensure the success of fieldwork. Yet, connection between researchers and research participants can now be maintained via social networking sites. This raises new questions about the ethics and practicalities of negotiating identity during and after fieldwork. The paper draws on a narrative ethnography of concealing my lesbian identity during and after ethnographic research in Bolivia.…
Climate change and Sids in the transpacific region
This article will discuss how the impacts of climate change are shaping the flows of people, capital and goods within the transpacific region. These flows are intimately shaped by the geographies and colonial histories of transpacific small island developing states, as well as the migratory patterns and diaspora communities of small island developing states. Findings are drawn from 12 months of ethnographic research, which explored the recovery o…
Shifts to Global Development
This special section on global development has been developed from a conference roundtable event run by the Development Geographies Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society. In this special section, we (some of the committee) introduce the four papers and their critical contributions to emerging debates. These extend early work on how the “global” is being made, focusing on the projects of multilateral development agencies and state insti…
Reframing resilience as resistance
This paper challenges resilience literature, which often strips grassroots actors of their political agency and reduces their resilient actions to no more than adapting, mitigating or recovering from an exogenous hazard. I apply an everyday resistance framework to unpack Puerto Ricans’ responses to the impacts of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the Caribbean Island in 2017. This methodological approach situates acts of resilience within the col…
Wiley Lecture 2022. Communicating climate change with comics
Drawing on my experience with creative research translation, in this work I discuss how comics provide several possibilities to communicate climate change using geographical analysis and anti‐essentialist representations. Comics can be deployed as a multi‐modal method that encourages researchers to use thick description to communicate embodied, intangible, and hidden experiences of life with climate change that are difficult to capture in other w…
Comics and Zines for Creative Research Impact
We contribute to critical debates about the ethics, politics and praxis of research impact by drawing on our experiences of translating research into a comic and a zine. We demonstrate how comics and zines construct ethical and nuanced depictions of socio-politically marginalised groups, moving away from ‘damage centred’ research frameworks. Comics and zines enable readers to access places and moments that other mediums are less able to, and they…
Waiting during disasters
Always spatial, waiting time is the observation of past‐present‐future, and temporality is the condition of being bounded by time. Both are mechanisms of state governance that control how and when families recover from rapid‐onset humanitarian disasters. Analysing these spatio‐temporalities reveals how families leverage resources to engage in acts of resilience that challenge the state’s spatio‐temporal control of recovery. A case study focuses o…
Un/making the 'sensory home
In this paper, we further develop the notion of the ‘sensory home’. We reveal how gustatory, olfactory and sonic experiences shape where and when one feels ‘at home’. We draw on a qualitative, longitudinal methodology to explore how low-income Puerto Ricans experienced domestic tastescapes, smellscapes and soundscapes during the first 12 months after Hurricane Maria in 2017. We first show how the sensory home is made with familiar and routine sen…
Postcolonial experiences of Chinese aid
This paper explores how public servants in aid‐recipient countries perceive and encounter the development structures and normative discourses of South–South partnerships. The paper draws on interviews with senior public servants in the Antigua and Barbuda government who interface directly with Chinese aid delivery. The public servants perceive that ‘Northern’ development models have largely failed and that ‘Southern’ donors can facilitate alterna…
Climate adaptation under austerity
A place-based framework to understand family disaster recovery
This paper develops a place based framework to explain how families recover from disasters. Using longitudinal patchwork ethnography in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria it proposes that family recovery is determined by a dynamic interplay between ‘etic facilitators’ (recovery assistance, public infrastructure, labour markets and social assistance, and market dynamics) and ‘emic facilitators’ (families' resources and subjective recovery prior…
Downplaying extreme heat
This paper explores how extreme heat is spatially and temporally imagined and how such imaginaries shape individual adaptation. It draws on a five month ethnography in Manchester – a temperate Global North city. I introduce ‘relative invulnerability’, a perceptual framework in which essentialist global imaginaries position extreme heat as a problem of the ‘Other’, often in the Global South, while temperate Global North contexts are equated with m…
Worldmaking the Global Climate Order
Small island developing states (SIDS) are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis yet have been marginalized within the global climate regime. Often overlooked in this story are their purposeful efforts to reform global climate governance in ways that increase the self-determination of all states over their climate futures. Drawing on interviews with senior civil servants in Antigua and Barbuda, alongside recent scholarship in political…
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (11 works) · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration (10 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Social science (6 works) · Business (5 works)