Sophie Cranston

Dr Sophie Cranston

Pronouns: She/her

Ph.D.(Edinburgh)

  • Senior Lecturer in Human Geography

Academic career:

  • 2020 onwards: Senior Lecturer in Human Geographies
  • 2014-2020: Lecturer in Human Geography, Loughborough University.
  • 2013-2014: Teaching Fellow, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh
  • 2010-2014: PhD, Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh

 

Professional responsibilities

Sophie's research looks broadly at the relationship between global mobility, privilege and identity. This has taken two key forms.

First, she has examined how migration categories are produced and practised, from the perspective of understanding cultural geographies of migration and the cultural economies of migration industries. Her ESRC-funded research on ‘Following the Expatriate’ drew upon mobilities as a field to look at the different ways in which ‘expatriate’ comes to be understood. It looked at how the Global Mobility Industry, an industry that supports the management of expatriate relocation, helps to produce expatriate identities. This also considered how British migrants in Singapore use the term expat. In Loughborough-funded research she has also looked at Third Culture Kids (TCKs), people who spent part of their childhood growing up in a different country from that which their parents are from.

Second, she has looked at the influence of global mobility on young people’s identities. This includes research that looks at high school aged children, through Loughborough University funded research on youth global citizenship in international schools. More recently, it has expanded to thinking about international student mobility, through ASET funded research on how young people use international work placements in their career planning and RGS-IBG funded research that examines the children of British migrants at UK Universities.

Sophie teaches broadly across topics looking at the geographies of work and migration.

Recent postgraduate research students

  • Ellie Moore (2022): Non-drinking students, Intersectional spaces of sobriety and academic citizenship on UK university campuses
  • Completed 2020: Charlotte Bolton: The English as a Foreign Language Industry: A Story of Contemporary Mobility Processes (University Scholarship).

Selected publications