I undertook my ESRC-funded MA and PhD with the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. My research focused on utopianism and utopian spaces as possibilities for experimenting with new forms of politics and citizenship. I undertook extensive ethnographic research with intentional communities, autonomous social centres, ecovillages and housing co-operatives throughout the United Kingdom. My thesis was published as a book with Routledge.

After my doctoral studies I was granted a postdoctoral bursary with the Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Nottingham which I used to explore the implications and possibilities of my research in the field of education.

I am very excited to have moved to the Cass School of Education and Communities at the University of East London, where I will be continuing my research into utopian possibilities for education, knowledge-production and pedagogy drawing on research with utopian communities, autonomous social movements and social centres.

I also have interests in alternative cosmologies and epistemologies, particularly utopian theories of time and temporality found in philosophy, counter-culture, sci-fi and utopian literature, as well as critical cartographies, psychogeography and utopian mapping practices.

I have six years' teaching and lecturing experience at universities including Nottingham University, Nottingham Trent International College and Brunel University. I've taken modules across different disciplines including Politics, Media Studies and Sociology and have also taught research methods and study skills.

I have been involved involved in various grassroots education and community projects including popular education workshops, arts and theatre projects. I have presented at several academic conferences and co-organized a conference promoting dialogue between academics and activists.

I have lots of experience of fieldwork and both qualitative and quantitative methods, but I particularly favour critical ethnographic and participative methodologies.

• Utopian studies
• Autonomous spaces
• Intentional communities
• Knowledge production and pedagogy
• Collective learning
  Social movements
• Politics of occupation
• Political geography, urban studies and critical cartography
• Consensus decision-making
• Partipatory design, co-design, co-creation
• Alternative cosmologies and epistemologies
• Philosophies of timePoststructuralism and post-anarchist theory, including the theories of Deleuze, Stirner, Bakhtin, Levinas and Nietzsche

Publications

• Firth, R. (2011) Utopian Politics: Citizenship and Practice, London and New York: Routledge.
• Firth, R. (2012). “Transgressive Citizenship: Beyond Utopian Urbanism”, Geografiska Annaler Series B: Human Geography, 94 (2): 89-106.
• Firth, R. and Robinson, A. (2012) “The Non-linear Future of Alternative Presents: Temporal Utopianism and Immanent Revolution” in Cecile Lawrence, Natalie Churn and Christian Garland (Eds.), Time and Revolution, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar: 241-254

Select Conference Papers

• “Embodied Cartographies”, Anarchist Studies Network Conference 2.0 ‘Making Connections’, with Dr Andrew Robinson, 6th September 2012.
• "Transgressing Urban Utopianism: Autonomy and Active Desire", Spaces of Alterity Conference, University of Nottingham, 27-28 April 2011.
• “Deterritorialized Citizenship”, The Politics of Space and Place, Fourth International Interdisciplinary Conference, Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics, University of Brighton, 16th -18th September 2009.
• “Locating Citizenship: Utopianism and Territory”, Alternative Futures and Popular Protest, Annual International Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University, 15th -17th April 2009.
• “Utopian Spaces: Account of Fieldwork”, Alternative Futures and Popular Protest, Annual Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University, 17th -19th March 2008.
• “Utopian Citizenship”, ESRC Practical Utopias and Utopian Practices Seminar Series: Citizenship, Kent University, Panel with Professor Engin Isin, 23rd February 2008.

Seminars and workshops

• “Critical Utopian Pedagogy: Imagining spaces and methods for a praxis of imagination”, Centre for Advanced Studies seminar series, University of Nottingham 25th April 2012.
• “Our Bodies, Our Selves: Art and Mapping”, a women-only workshop conducted with activist group Autonomous Nottingham, 3rd December 2011.
• “Utopian Conceptions of Time and Becoming”, Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice seminar series, University of Nottingham, 13th February 2011.