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Araby Smyth

Assistant Professor
Phone
Office
AVDX 313
Office hours
By Appointment

Biography

 I am a feminist economic and urban geographer. Prior to Mount Allison University, I worked as a Post-Doctoral Visitor on the SSHRC funded GenUrb Project at the City Institute of York University in Toronto. My research on debt, remittance economies, and decolonizing knowledge production has been funded by the Antipode Foundation, National Science Foundation (USA), and Society of Woman Geographers. I have published in journals such as Antipode, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and I am on the Editorial Collective of ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies.

Publications

Smyth A. 2024. 'Feminist Approaches to Debt in the City.' In Peake L, Adeniyi-Ogunyankin G and Datta A (eds) Handbook on Gender and Cities (pp 274-283). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Peake L, Razavi N S and Smyth A (eds). 2024. 'Doing Feminist Urban Research: Insights from the GenUrb Project.' London: Routledge.

Smyth A. 2024. 'Making Futures in Oaxaca: Remittances in the Diverse Economies of Social Reproduction.' Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 49(2): 1-13. 10.1111/tran.12659

Smyth A. 2023. 'Proceeding through Colonial Past-presents in Fieldwork: Methodological Lessons on Accountability, Refusal, and Autonomy.' Antipode 55(1): 268-285.

Smyth A. 2022. 'Challenging the Financialization of Remittances Agenda through Indigenous Women’s Practices in Oaxaca.' Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 54(4): 761-778. 10.1177/0308518X20977186

Linz J and Smyth A. 2021. 'The Feminist Coven at University of Kentucky.' In Gökarıksel B, Hawkins M, Neubert C and Smith S (eds) Feminist Geography Unbound: Intimacy, Territory, and Embodied Power (pp 263-267). Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.

Smyth A, Linz J and Hudson L. 2020. A Feminist Coven in the University. Gender, Place & Culture 27(6): 854-880. 10.1080/0966369X.2019.1681367

Smyth A. 2017. 'Re-Reading Remittances through Solidarity: Mexican Hometown Associations in New York City.' Geoforum 85 (October): 12–19. 10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.06.025

 

Education

  • 2021  Doctor of Philosophy in Geography, University of Kentucky
  • 2015  Masters of Arts in Geography, Hunter College of the City University of New York
  • 2015  Certificate of Geographic Information Science, Hunter College of the City University of New York
  • 2006  Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, Hunter College of the City University of New York

Teaching

  • GENV 1201 The Human Environment
  • GENV 2221 The Developing World
  • GENV 3701 Research Methods in Human Geography and Environment
  • GENV 3831 Gography of Global Cities
  • GENV 3991 Geographies of Finance

Research

My research agenda responds to the global challenge of building inclusive economies by examining how the financialization of debt and remittances are creating precarity in the lives of women living in areas characterized by under-development. To do this I draw upon anti- and decolonial frameworks in feminist, Black, Latin American, and Indigenous studies, economic geography, and political economy to analyze the finance industry and community social relations that nurture collective life and refuse capitalist expectations. The goal of my next major research project, Expanded Extractivism: Debt, Remittances and the Finance Industry, is to understand how the finance industry perpetuates precarity among
transnational families that share remittances between Canada, the USA, and Mexico.

I am also co-investigator on the Antipode Foundation funded project Beyond Esri: Moving Toward Abolition in Geography. Esri is the global market leader in software for geospatial analysis and as such it is ubiquitous in geography education as well as policing and surveillance. Our research challenges the ways in which geography is implicated in carcerality through its strong ties to Esri, and provides examples of how geographers can divest from law enforcement, and incorporate abolition in research and teaching.

Grants, awards & honours

2024/2023 Exchange Conference Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
2023 Nominee for a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Department of Geography & Planning and Faulty of Arts & Science, University of Toronto
2023 "Right to the Discipline" Grant, Antipode Foundation
2022 Outstanding Teaching Award, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Kentucky
2019 Scholar Award, Philanthropic Educational Organization
2018 Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award (#1833226), National Sciences Foundation Geography and Spatial Sciences Program
2018 Evelyn L. Puitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research Society of Woman Geographers
2015 Miriam and Saul B. Cohen Prize for Geographic Excellence, Department of Geography, Hunter College of the City University of New York