ALEX BAKER

Alex Baker’s work focuses on the interaction between power, forced movement, social conflict, and the urban technical. After completing a PhD in town planning at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in early 2017, Alex taught in the department of Geography at Durham University before being awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to pursue a research project on eviction enforcement at Sheffield University in 2019. Alex is based in the department of Urban Studies and Planning and is also an associate researcher in the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield.

Alex’s current work focuses on creating new conceptual frameworks to explain how the technical practice of making evictions happen develops and spreads in different countries around the world. This project plans to use fieldwork in the UK, South Africa, and Germany, to understand why different countries use different institutions in law enforcement, private security and bureaucratic management when effecting evictions. Alex has work published in a number of places including City and Progress in Human Geography and is active in a collaborative network of early career urban studies researchers within Sheffield and beyond.