Dr Sarah Peck

Assistant Professor

School: Geography and Natural Sciences

I am a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the Centre for International Development (2020-2024). My work is centred on my interests in civic space, migration and global development and collaborative research methods. My main areas of research interest are:

1. Everyday activism, solidarity and civic space for development, particularly transnational mobilisations.

2. Critical geographies of migration, development, race and belonging.

3. The philosophy and culture of aid, particularly the geographies of reparative justice in the context of small island states and UK-Caribbean relations.

My current research project, entitled Deterritorialised responsibilities: diasporic life, civic space and global development, adopts a comparative multi-sited approach, combining policy analysis, archival research, narrative interviewing and digital storytelling to explore the intersections between diasporic life, civic engagement and global development, and how this has changed over time for diasporic groups and communities in the UK.

More information about this project can be found here: Diasporic life and global development

I completed my PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2018. My PhD examined the experiences of civil society actors working in sustainable development in Barbados and Grenada. Working in collaboration with an International Development agency, my research concluded that civil society can be understood as a space of complex interactions, rather than one based on Western constructs.

More information about my PhD work can be found here: Civil Society & Sustainable Development in the Caribbean (wordpress.com)

I am also interested in collaborative and participatory research methods. I have worked in academic and the voluntary sector, prior to coming to Northumbria I completed a qualitative project with a team of volunteer researchers looking at ageing and social isolation in Sheffield.

Email Sarah

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Infrastructures of (dis) connection: Declining Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) and the shifting geographies of development, Peck, S., Baillie Smith, M. 26 Jan 2026, In: The Geographical Journal
‘Doubly exploited’: Migration, activism and the generative geographies of labour agency, Peck, S. 1 Feb 2025, In: Geoforum
Organising at the Margins: Spaces of Worker Resistance in Late Twentieth Century Britain, Griffin, P., Peck, S. 27 Nov 2025, In: Political Geography
South Asian Climate Transnationalism: Beyond Diasporic Humanitarianism, Booth, D., Taylor, S., Irudayarajan, R., Peck, S., Sebastian, I. 9 Feb 2025, In: Migration and Development
Civil society and civic space, Peck, S. 28 May 2024, The Companion to Development Studies, London, Routledge
A ‘distinct UK offer’: The geographies of the FCDO's International Development Strategy 2022, Peck, S. 1 Mar 2023, In: The Geographical Journal
An evolving migration-development nexus: DfID and British politics of race and belonging, Peck, S. 1 Jun 2023, In: Geoforum
‘A philosophy of change’: Emotions, civil society and global development, Peck, S. 1 May 2023, In: Emotion, Space and Society
Archipelagic geographies, civil society and global development, Peck, S. Mar 2023, In: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
Beyond knowledge exchange: doctoral training, collaborative research and reflective pedagogies in human geography, Peck, S. 1 Jan 2023, In: Journal of Geography in Higher Education

PGR Supervision

Mohammad Nawaz Faith, religion, belief and global development Start Date: 01/10/2025 End Date: 17/10/2025
Mohammad Nawaz Faith, religion, belief and global development Start Date: 01/10/2025