Dr Naomi Millner

Dr Naomi Millner
BA(Cantab), MSc(Bristol)

Lecturer

Area of research

Embodied experience in solidaristic responses to irregular migrants

Office Browns Room 3
University Road,
Clifton, Bristol BS8 1SS
(See a map)

+44 (0) 117 331 7316
nm7180@bristol.ac.uk

Summary

My current work focuses on solidarity activism within new geographies of irregular migration and citizenship, especially in the EU. I work to theorise the importance of embodied experience within new kinds of ethical response to irregular migrants - especially in a biopolitical context, where ideas of 'life'and 'vitality' are already important concepts in the government of borders and security.My interest is to locate and expand spaces of political dissent around the ways in which life is governed within new EU regimes of mobility. However, I seek also to show how the emergence of novel expressions of ethical subjectivity offer us resilient and durable alternatives for governing social life.

A new line of research follows the place of myth and story in 'community-led' sustainability practices. The aim of this collaborative research is to demonstrate how governmental sustainability initiatives directed at communities usually fail to acknowledge the way that experience produces authority in biopolitical modernity. My empirical studies follow how experimental practices at the margins yield experiential narratives as models for change with different kind of political 'grip' over social life. Speaking from and to experience, they offer important resources for rethinking sustainability.

Biography

Whilst lecturing in the Bristol School of Geographical Sciences, I am also in the final stages of completing my PhD on solidarity activism as an ethical response to irregular migration within EU regimes of security and citizenship. My thesis focuses on the politicisation of the French border-town of Calais in a broader EU context, seeking to conceptualise the significance of alternative conceptions of ethical subjectivity for opening new ways of thinking about biopolitical government.

I am an active member of the Authority Research Network - an interdisciplinary research group of young professionals working collaboratively to develop a materialist analytic of authority, and investigate creative or immanent productions of authority. Initiatied with support from the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Bristol in 2008, current activites include a scoping study for the AHRC-led Connected Communities programme.

I also work in information and advocacy in a local drop-in centre, have helped establish a citywide accommodation network for people seeking asylum and experiencing destitution, and am closely associated with a number of activist groups. I am interested in spaces of exchange between academia and activism, and in developing dialogical initiatives on the periphery of academia.

Teaching

I am currently lecturing in undergraduate courses including Social Geography, Philosophical Approaches to Geography, and Gender & Labour. I have taught on the Bristol Masters Society & Space programme, within the Theorising Society & Space module. My experience prior to postgraduate studies included specialist teaching at a secondary level, and developing access courses for at-risk young people.