Tom Cowan

New essay, written for the excellent @transitionsec.bsky.social
Propelled by the climatic and hegemonic transitions, military-imperial forms of state capitalism are confiscating our collective right to a safe, green, tech-powered future.
transitionsecurity.org/imperial-sta...
@campolis.bsky.social

💥 New publication out on the alignment of AI & authoritarianism 💥

We argue that AI is not simply extending, but actively modulating, key dynamics of authoritarianism, and present a flexible analytical framework to account for these changes.

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

States of precarity in UK Higher Education geography Findings from a discipline-focused research project exploring the lived realities of precarious academic work within UK Higher Education geography.

Precarity is not a niche issue.

One-third of academic Geographers in the UK are on fixed-term contracts.

Our report shows the profound personal, professional, and disciplinary impacts of this. #StatesofPrecarity

Full report: www.rgs.org/research/hig...

This is not the way, and @cnygren.bsky.social and I lay out in detail why it isn’t in this essay here. static1.squarespace.com/static/55577...

Save Geography at the University of Leicester Can you spare a minute to help this campaign?

Please sign c.org/cYgDXSqx62

Human Geography at Leicester is facing closure. Staff contracts are to end in June 2026; students are to be relocated to other universities, or taught out by a maximum of two (!) teaching-only staff. Other departments and subjects are facing closure, too. Please join the demo!

Looking forward to discussing @asaenzdesicilia.bsky.social's essential new book on subsumption at @histmat.bsky.social conference this week -- subsumption heads, this is the one - come through!

Looking forward to the roundtable/launch panel for Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx at the @histmat.bsky.social conference this weekend.
W/ Patrick Murray, @alybatt.bsky.social, Maria Chehonadskih, @termcern.bsky.social

Fascinating insights into the technics of digitalized propertization that is underway across rural and peri-urban India:

The State and Software Capital | Mila Samdub India’s digital public infrastructure and the promise of the world’s largest online consumer market

Fascinating essay on digital public infrastructure & India's software capital www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/dig... @phenomenalworld.bsky.social

Incredibly happy to have been awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Geography!

Big thanks to all my friends and colleagues for all their support - and the @leverhulme.ac.uk for the recognition.

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library Svamitva drone survey in Rajasthan. Source: Author.

New paper in @tibg.bsky.social:

High-resolution property: drone enclosures in digital India

In it I examine how mass digitized enclosures rely upon a new regime of perception - able to speculatively extract private ownership from collectivised land
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Pls share: Applications open for Summer Institute in Economic Geography, Toronto, 5-10 July 2026

Featuring: Lars Coenen, Karen Lai, Devika Narayan and Stefan Ouma

Early career economic geographers (broadly defined) are welcome to apply. Stipends available. www.econgeog.net/Toronto2026

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Transactions by Thomas Cowan (2025) entitled: 'High-resolution property: Drone enclosures in digital India' with a red banner at the top. Drawing from ethnographic research on the implementation of Svamitva, one of the largest digitalized property titling schemes in the world, this paper examines how new drone and geospatial technologies are being deployed to enclose rural customary lands across contemporary India. Focusing on the initial processes of droney survey, GIS mapping and data-creation under the scheme, the paper argues that the creation of ‘high-resolution property’ is achieved not through simple technological observation, but rather via the imposition of a new regime of perception. One coordinated through the speculative and ideological property-making practices of drone surveyors, GIS technicians, and local residents. This new regime of perception aims to extract individual ownership lurking within collectivity, subdivide collectivised lands, and cleanly link rural property to global asset markets and digital public infrastructures. In doing so the paper seeks to provincialise contemporary geographical scholarship on property technology or PropTech, drawing from the diverse property systems and emerging technological apparatus of the Global South, and examine the lively and mediated sociotechnical practices required to convert hundreds of thousands of rural territories into high-resolution private titles and data-points. In doing so, the paper seeks to challenge the overt techno-determinism and solutionism within official debates concerning property digitalization, highlighting instead the ways digitialized property remains socially, ecologically and institutionally mediated.

New in TIBG!

'High-resolution property: Drone enclosures in digital India' by @termcern.bsky.social

This paper examines how drone & geospatial technologies are being deployed to enclose rural customary lands across India.

doi.org/10.1111/tran... #geosky

Thanks Louise!

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library Svamitva drone survey in Rajasthan. Source: Author.

Such a nice paper on feature extraction as a project of perception - drone enclosures in digital India. “Feature extraction is an entirely speculative endeavour” rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Urbanization without guarantees: articulation, rentier capitalism and occupancy on the agrarian urban frontier This article engages with the work of Stuart Hall to examine conditions of agrarian city-making on India’s urban frontier. The article draws on Hall’s writings on articulation and marxist method to...

Drawing on Staurt Hall to discuss agrarian urbanisation in Gurgaon, @termcern.bsky.social argues that the agrarian world operates as an 'articulating principle' that structures capitalist urban expansion 'without guarantees'

doi.org/10.1080/0272...

Urban Geography New Urban Frontiers. Volume 46, Issue 8 of Urban Geography

'New Urban Frontiers'

This @urbangeography.bsky.social special issue edited by me and @clairemercer.bsky.social has now been published online: www.tandfonline.com/toc/rurb20/4...

A thread on the papers 👇

Informational Peripheries Urbanisation and urban life in a digital age needs to be examined through a lens of information – encompassing both its politics and its geographies. The periphery in an information age is located sim...

Our 'Informational Peripheries' book is now published and out for the world to read in paperback and online free #openaccess.
Edited with @fennaimara.bsky.social
It has been a pleasure working with @uclpress.bsky.social Read & download free at: bit.ly/4l76QR4
@uclgeography.bsky.social

Informational Peripheries Urbanisation and urban life in a digital age needs to be examined through a lens of information – encompassing both its politics and its geographies. The periphery in an information age is located sim...

Informational Peripheries is out now with @uclpress.bsky.social! It brings together critical perspectives on how information flows (or doesn’t) across the edges of systems: archives, infrastructures, digital divides, and more.

Edited with @ayonadatta.bsky.social 🙌

uclpress.co.uk/book/informa...

Against Cultural Competence: Social Housing and Institutional Post-Racism This paper focuses on recent efforts to combat racialized inequalities in English social housing through “cultural competence”. Based on longitudinal, mixed qualitative research it argues that, des...

Fantastic research on and critique of "cultural competence" approaches to racism in UK social housing sector
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Newcastle University compulsory job cut fears grow amid £4.2m savings shortfall As industrial action continues, union bosses continue their plea with Newcastle University chiefs to reject any potential compulsory job losses

Solidarity with all at Newcastle, especially the Geography professors threatened with compulsory redundancy - managers are looking to cut 2.0 FTE posts

At least 326 killed as Israel unleashes wave of attacks on Gaza Israeli assaults across Gaza resume, effectively shattering the fragile ceasefire with Hamas.

At least 326 killed as Israel unleashes strikes on Gaza, breaking ceasefire : www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/...

There is no alternative to creating an alternative: critical urban studies in the authoritarian moment Published in City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action (Ahead of Print, 2025)

My editorial in the newest issue of CITY: Analysis of urban change, theory, action www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I was interviewed as part of this investigative report on the travails of drone-led property titling in India, check it out 👉

Job Vacancy at the University of Nottingham: Assistant Professor in Human Geography Applications are invited for the post of Assistant Professor in the School of Geography. We are seeking to appoint an academic to make a significant impact within the broad research and teaching area ...

**Job opportunity** We are hiring a permanent Assistant Professor in Human Geograpy in the School of Geography - please do circulate jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx... @uniofnottingham.bsky.social

A reminder to everyone in the West - a ceasefire is just the beginning, the goal is liberation. Our work doesn't stop until Palestine is free, from the river to the sea.

New publication! In this paper in Critical Historical Studies, I undertake a detailed methodological engagement with Jairus Banaji’s remarkable scholarship on historical capitalism: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...