Emma Mawdsley

MA (Cantab), PhD (Cantab)

College roles

Professorial Fellow (C)
College Lecturer in Geography
Director of Studies in Geography (LT)
Postgraduate Mentor
Senior Treasurer of the Boat Club

University roles

Professor of Human Geography
Head of Department, Geography

Biography

Professor Emma Mawdsley studied for her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at St John’s College, Cambridge. She became Lecturer at the Department of Geography, Durham University, and then Senior Lecturer, at the Department of Geography, Birkbeck College. Since 2006, she has been based at the Department of Geography at Cambridge University, where she has been Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and now Professor.

In May 2021 Prof Emma Mawdsley was awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s prestigious Busk Medal, “for exceptional engagements with fieldwork, research and knowledge production about the global South”.

Research Interests

Emma’s current research focuses on global development politics. She is leading an FCDO funded project on India’s role as a development provider, and UK-India partnerships (); and is the Principal Investigator on a substantial ESRC project (2021-2024) on the for-profit development sector, focussing on consultants and contractors in the development sector. She is also interested in the role of ‘hope’ in teaching Geography at University, and in 2021 was awarded the Ray Y Gildea Jr grant by the Royal Geographical Society to support this.http://www.iukdpf.com