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School of Geography

Professor Jon May

Jon

Professor of Geography, Director of Student Support and Engagement

Email: j.may@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 8925
Room Number: Geography Building, Room 124

Profile

I am a social geographer with a particular interest in issues of social inequality. My work uses an ethnographic approach to explore questions of inequality and social justice on the ground, through the experiences of food banking, homelessness, and low-paid work. I am particularly interested in exploring sites of potential challenge to neoliberal political and ethical values and practices.

Beyond Queen Mary I am on the editorial board of Social and Cultural Geography, a member of the ESRC's Peer Review College, and a co-founder and Trustee of the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN).

Selected Publications:

Food banking

  • Williams, A. and May, J. (2022) 'A genealogy of the food bank: Historicizing the rise of food charity in the UK', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47 (3): 618-634
  • May, J., Williams, A., Cloke, P. and Cherry, L. (2020) 'Still bleeding: The variegated geographies of austerity and food banking in rural England and Wales', Journal of Rural Studies 79: 409-424
  • May, J., Williams, A., Cloke, P. and Cherry, L. (2020) 'Food banks and the production of scarcity', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 45 (1): 208-222
  • Cloke, P., May, J. and Williams, A. (2020) 'Postsecularities of care: in-common ethics and politics of 'the meantime(s)''', Cities 100: 102667  
  • May, J., Williams, A., Cloke, P. and Cherry, L. (2019) 'Welfare convergence, bureaucracy, and moral distancing at the food bank', Antipode 51(4): 1251-1275
  • May, J., Williams, A., Cloke, P. and Cherry, L. (2018) 'Do food banks help?', Geography Review 37(1): 3-34
  • Cloke, P., May, J., Williams, A. (2017) 'The geographies of food banks in the mean times', Progress in Human Geography 41(6): 703-26
  • Williams, A., Cloke, P., May, J. and Goodwin, M. (2016) 'Contested space: the contradictory political dynamics of food banking in the UK', Environment and Planning A 48 (11): 2291-2316

Homelessness

  • May, J. and Cloke, P. (2014) ‘Modes of attentiveness: Reading for difference in geographies of homelessness’, Antipode 46 (4): 894-920
  • Cloke, P., May, J., Johnsen, S. (2010) Swept up Lives? Re-envisioning the homeless city. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. 280pp.
  • Devertueil, G., May, J., and Von Mahs, J. (2009) ‘Complexity not collapse: recasting geographies of homelessness in a ‘punitive age’’, Progress in Human Geography 33 (5): 646–666.
  • Cloke, P. May, J. and Johnsen, S. (2008) ‘Performativity and affect in the homeless city’, Environment and Planning: Society and Space 26 (2): 241–263.
  • May, J., Johnsen, S. and Cloke, P. (2007) 'Alternative cartographies of homelessness: rendering visible British women's experiences of 'visible' homelessness', Gender, Place and Culture 14(2): 121-40
  • Cloke, P., Johnsen, S. and May, J. (2007) 'Ethical citizenship? Volunteers and the ethics of providing services for homeless people', Geoforum 38: 1089-1101

Migrant Divisions of Labour

  • Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J. and McIlwaine,  C. (2010) Global Cities at Work: New migrant divisions of  labour. Pluto Press, London. 288pp.
  • Datta, K., McIlwaine, C., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J. and Wills, J. (2010) 'A migrant ethic of care? Negotiating care and caring among migrant workers in London's low pay economy', Feminist Review 94:93-116
  • Datta, K., McIlwaine, C., Evans, R., Herbert, J., May, J. and Wills, J. (2009) 'Men on the move? Embodied narratives of migration and work among low-paid men in London', Social and Cultural Geography 10(8): 853-873
  • May, J., Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J. and McIlwaine, C. (2007) ‘Keeping London working: global cities, the British state, and London’s new migrant division of labour’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32: 151–67.
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