Caitlin MacKinlay (she/they)

🚨Another publication dropped🚨

For a special issue on Critical Camp Studies in the journal Population, Space and Place I have written the afterword entitled “Epilogue: Towards an Abolitionist Camp Studies”.

It’s open access, please check it out!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

📢 Call for abstracts! 📢

'Accessing the Carceral Continuum: Success, Denial and Negotiation' at the RGS-IBG AC2026!

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words to Renzo Szkwarok (r.szkwarok1@newcastle.ac.uk) and myself (caitlin.mackinlay@durham.ac.uk) by Friday 13th February 2026!

Please to see the pre-print of my graphic article has had has nearly 2,000 unique views. 🐧

It’s out now in print, vol 33 issue 2, and remains open access onine!

@tandfresearch.bsky.social @geogdurham.bsky.social
@durhamuniversity.bsky.social

📢 Call for abstracts! 📢

'Accessing the Carceral Continuum: Success, Denial and Negotiation' at the RGS-IBG AC2026!

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words to Renzo Szkwarok (r.szkwarok1@newcastle.ac.uk) and myself (caitlin.mackinlay@durham.ac.uk) by Friday 13th February 2026!

20.11.2025

Long prison sentences function as involuntary sterilization of incarcerated people By keeping me imprisoned through the years when I might have become a parent, the prison system reproduces eugenicist logic

One thing I love about @prismreports.org is that they work so closely with incarcerated writers, and surface things I had never thought about before. This piece on how extended incarceration is a violation of reproductive rights by functionally serving as involuntary sterilization is fantastic.

Event flyer including photos of the four speakers, and a question: What is the role of geography, geographers, and critical geographical scholarship at a time of anti-trans reactionary politics?

I will be speaking alongside @jaytoddgla.bsky.social, Ed Kiely & @amkanngieser.bsky.social on this panel: ‘A Sense of the Possible: Trans Geographies in Dystopian Times’, 13 Nov 2025, 12:00-1:30 GMT

Sign up for the Zoom link here: rgs.org/events/upcoming-events/trans-geographies-in-dystopian-times

Excited to continue developing these conversations and to keep thinking about the importance of queer and trans theory within geography.

Today I co-hosted @geogdurham.bsky.social’s first event for the newly founded Queer and Trans Thematic Group. We shared questions, insights and potential opportunities for using queer and trans theorising within our own research and produced some wonderful collaborative mind maps (as shown below)!

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library This paper reflects on the archival encounter. In our discussion, we consider interactions between researchers and more troubling and violent materials, specifically industrial death and injury, held...

Really enjoyed working on this with current PGR - Liv Robinson. We reflect on the archival encounter, with specific comments around industrial violence and working with troubling material: rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

A heartfelt thank you to the wonderful people at Metropolis, World Association of the Major Metropolises for this award! I was so honoured that 'Waste and the City' won this prize. I am huge... A heartfelt thank you to the wonderful people at Metropolis, World Association of the Major Metropolises for this award! I was so honoured that 'Waste and the City' won this prize. I am hugely grate...

A huge thank you to the wonderful people at Metropolis for this award! I was so honoured & grateful opportunity in Seoul to focus attention on the global urban sanitation crisis. Thank you to @versobooks.bsky.social for nominating the book, & to Pattis.

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

What does academic writing about resistance do, now? Published in Space and Polity (Ahead of Print, 2025)

I'm so grateful to @spaceandpolity.bsky.social for coordinating a book review forum on Critical Geographies of Resistance.

Thank you so much to Malene Jacobsen, Nicole Printy Currie and Bridget Shaffrey @bshaffrey.bsky.social for your thoughtful pieces.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Shereen Fernandez (2025) entitled: 'Networks of securitisation in the academy: The role of friendship, solidarity and radical geographies' with a black banner at the top. This intervention has three aims: (1) to consider how solidarities are being policed in the academy; (2) how friendships and solidarities emerge in practices of resistance; and (3) what a radical geography which embraces a decolonial pedagogy can offer us in these unsettling times. While solidarity with the Palestinian cause is transnational, it is also heavily policed and disciplined by our academic institutions. Although universities are heavily influenced by neoliberalism that prioritises profit over people, I examine how these activist spaces allow for the organic development of solidarity and friendship, which is fundamental to these movements, both in the USA and the UK. As universities increasingly embrace national security discourses and policies, such as the deployment of counter-extremism measures in UK universities, activism is being pushed outside of our institutions. Through a call for the recognition of radical geography which embraces a decolonial framework, this intervention highlights the need for the discipline to re-imagine how knowledge can be produced outside the narrow parameters of the institution, while centring and nurturing dynamics of friendship and care.

#OpenAccess in Area:

'Networks of securitisation in the academy: The role of friendship, solidarity and radical geographies' by @shereenfdz.bsky.social

This paper is part of an ongoing Special Section: 'Dialogues in Radical Geography'.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

looking through riot grrrl zines to prep for my zine making workshop and found this gem

Being tourists in Roma 🇮🇹

i’m not going to be lectured about political violence by people whose politics is violence

Cooper suggests asylum seekers could be moved into warehouses instead of hotels – UK politics live Home secretary says government aims to ‘shrink the whole asylum system’ and is looking at ‘military and industrial sites’

It shouldn't need saying that 'military and industrial sites' are not, and never have been, 'more appropriate sites' for asylum seekers. The record of such carceral accommodation is nothing but spectacles of harm designed to appease a desire to punish refugees. www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library When a positive decision is granted on an asylum claim, a new refugee has limited time before their existing government support (housing, finance) terminates. This transition between legal is various...

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

Really happy to see this out "Theorising legal gaps geographically: Exploring the transition from asylum seeker to refugee in the UK"

Author wearing a rainbow dyed t-shirt takes a photo of them showing off their book, The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law.

My book is published! It’s a critical take on how emotions shape conflicts about LGBT rights and repair in equality law, gender recognition, bans on conversion practices, and sex education in schools. You can download it free via @edinburghup.bsky.social: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-emo...

One cancelled train later…I’m finally en route to Birmingham for the RGS AC2025 !

And that’s a wrap! My heart is very full by how caring, gentle and connected our group was able to become over 3 short days.

Thanks to everyone for co-creating this event with us! I hope that this network of collegiality, care and consideration can serve us into the future too 💛

Queer writing retreat (day one) ✅

Talking to @prisonculture.bsky.social about her idea that hope is a discipline. How do we practice that discipline?

From Ep 5 of my new podcast, which you can listen to here:
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

Please subscribe and review--it helps others find us.

Picked up the mug I decorated! 🕺

My trip to Portugal was a nice break away from thinking and writing about carceral atmospheres.. except when navigating the security apparatus of the airport…

Faro!

Lisbon!

The cover of Zengin’s book

Back in January I had the honour of discussing Aslı Zengin’s powerful and generous book ‘Violent Intimacies: The Trans Everyday and the Making of an Urban World’.
@geogdurham.bsky.social @dukepress.bsky.social

I’ve now published a summary of my comments:

doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2025.2531713

A short piece from me looking at the politics of 'asylum hotels' in Britain and the challenges for government in finding alternatives @geogdurham.bsky.social