Lucy is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at King’s. She is interested in political ecology, critical urban theory, water governance, housing and environmental justice, feminist political economy, social reproduction, and racial capitalism. She holds an MSc in Environment, Politics, and Development (Distinction) from King’s.

Lucy is also a King's staff member based in the School of Global Affairs, coordinating the Plumbing Poverty research project. The project draws on urban political ecology and racial capitalism, coupled with ethnographic and census-based research, to investigate why household water insecurity arises and persists in wealthy cities and countries across the Global North.

Prior to academia, Lucy worked in scholarly publishing at Nature Research and then at Palgrave Macmillan as a commissioning Editor (books) within the politics and international studies team.

Research

Thesis title: 'Rent, Race, and the Reproduction of Plumbing Poverty in New York City'

Lucy's PhD research analyses the reproduction of plumbing poverty in New York City from a critical governance perspective. Using water shutoffs as an analytical lens, she explores the spatiotemporal processes and social infrastructures constituting and complicating displacement and dispossession through water. Drawing on a mix of interview, participation, and archival methods, she examines the operative logic underpinning water-evicting through cyborg assemblages of municipal financialisation, real-estate investment, landlord–tenant relations, and urban geographies of racial capitalism.

PhD supervision

• Principal supervisor: Katie Meehan
• Secondary supervisor: Johan Andersson

Further details

See Lucy's research profile