Dr Sarah Peck

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.