About Jesus College/Our community/ People
Dr Jonathon Turnbull

Roles and subjects

Junior Research Fellow in Geography

Contact

Jonathon.turnbull@ouce.ox.ac.uk

Academic Background

  • BA Geography, University of Oxford (Jesus College)
  • MSc Nature, Society, and Environmental Governance, University of Oxford (Christ Church College)
  • PhD Geography, University of Cambridge (King’s College), Visiting

Undergraduate Teaching Areas

Jonny teaches and co-supervises several BA, MSc, and PhD students on topics relating to more-than-human geographies, digital ecologies, and urban ecologies.

Research Interests

Jonathon is a cultural, environmental, and urban geographer from Newcastle upon Tyne. His research examines how understandings of nature are produced and contested across geographical contexts and why this matters for more-than-human social, political, and economic life.

Jonny’s ESRC-funded PhD research took place in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine where he conducted long-term ethnographic research examining contrasting and spectacular narratives concerning nature’s recovery in the Zone. This involved deploying a range of more-than-human ethnographic, participatory, historical, and visual methods.

His current postdoctoral research, funded by the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, investigates urban rewilding initiatives, from top-down governance schemes to local community-based practices in London and Berlin. Jonny is currently conducting fieldwork on beaver reintroduction sites in Enfield and Ealing, London.

His other research interests include bovine geographies, metabolism and metabo-politics, weird geographies, and anthropause environmentalisms.

Jonny co-founded the Digital Ecologies research group in 2020 and the Ukrainian Environmental Humanities Network in 2022. He is involved in numerous fundraising collectives and initiatives in Ukraine and encourages others to continue learning about the devastating consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

You can follow his work @jonnyjjt.

Hobbies

Jonny spends his time between Oxford, London, Newcastle, and Ukraine. He has been a Newcastle United season ticket holder for as long as he can remember, is a keen darts player, and likes spending his weekends out in nature or in Kyiv’s clubs. He is currently making a film about the dogs of Chornobyl with his colleagues in Ukraine.

Publications

Journal Articles

2023

  • Turnbull, J. and Saddington, L. 2023 Editorial introduction: Volume 3, Issue 3: The Roots of Routes. Routes 3(3): 149-154. https://routesjournal.org/2023/12/09/editorial-introduction-volume-3-issue-3/.
  • Oliver, C., Turnbull, J. and Richardson, M. 2023. Claiming veganism and vegan geographies. The Geographical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12546.
  • Turnbull, J. and Barua, M. 2023. Living Waste, Living on Waste: a bioeconomy of urban cows in Delhi. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12573.
  • Searle, A., Turnbull, J., Hartman Davies, O., Poerting, J., Chasseray-Peraldi, P., Dodsworth, J., Anderson-Elliot, H. in press. Glitches in the Technonatural Present. Dialogues in Human Geography.
  • Turnbull, J., Searle, A. and Lorimer, J. 2023. Anthropause environmentalisms: Noticing natures with the Self-isolating Bird Club. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 48(2): 232-248. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12569.
  • Searle, A., Turnbull, J. and Adams, W.M. 2023. The digital peregrine: a technonatural history of a cosmopolitan raptor. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 48(1): 195-212. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12566.
  • von Essen, E., Turnbull, J., Searle, A., Jørgensen, F.A., Hofmeester, T.R., and van der Wal, R. 2023. Wildlife in the Digital Anthropocene: Examining Human-Animal Relations through Surveillance Technologies. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 6(1): 679-699. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211061704.

2022

2021

  • Oliver, C., Ragavan, S., Turnbull, J., Chowdhury, A., Borden, D., Fry, T., Gutgutia, S. and Srivastava, S. 2021. Introduction to the urban ecologies open collection: A call for contributions on methods, ethics, and design in geographical research with urban animals. Geo, 8(2): 1-7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.101.
  • Turnbull, J. 2021. Weird. Environmental Humanities, 13(1): 275-280. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-8867329.
  • Searle, A., Turnbull, J., and Lorimer, J. 2021. After the anthropause: Lockdown lessons for more‐than‐human geographies. The Geographical Journal, 187(1): 69-77. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12373.

2020

  • Turnbull, J. 2020. Checkpoint dogs: Photovoicing canine companionship in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Anthropology Today, 36(6): 21-24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12620.
  • Turnbull, J., Searle, A., and Adams, W.M. 2020. Quarantine encounters with digital animals: More-than-human geographies of lockdown life. Journal of Environmental Media, 1 (Supplement): 6.1-10. DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jem_00027_1.
  • Searle, A. and Turnbull, J. 2020. Resurgent natures? More-than-human perspectives on Covid-19. Dialogues in Human Geography, 10(2): 291-295. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820620933859.
  • Turnbull, J., Searle, A. and Adams, W.M. 2020. Quarantine urban ecologies. Cultural Anthropology, Fieldsights: 19 May.

Books

  • Turnbull, J., Searle, A., Anderson-Elliott, H. and Giraud, E. (Eds.) In Press. Digital Ecologies: Mediating More-Than-Human Worlds. Manchester University Press.

Book chapters

2023

  • Wrigley, C., Turnbull, J. and Searle, A. in press. Terraforming Terra. In Green Transitions.
  • Searle, A. and Turnbull, J. 2023. More-than-Human Reflections on Anthropause. In A. Franklin (Ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of More-than-Human Studies. London: Routledge.
  • Turnbull, J. 2023. The Kyiv Thickets. In S. Dovzhyk (Ed.) Ukraine Lab: Global Security, Environment, and Disinformation Through the Prism of Ukraine. New York: Columbia University Press. Available here and here.
  • Turnbull, J. and Brown, K. in press. Compounding Catastrophes in Polissya: Chornobyl’s Legacy Along the E40 Waterway. In P. Högselius (Ed.) Nuclear-Water Nexus.
  • Turnbull, J. and Searle, A. 2023. Digital Geographies and Ecologies. In T. Osborne and P. Jones (Eds.) A Research Agenda for Digital Geographies. Cheltenham and Camberley: Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Adams, W.M., Searle, A. and Turnbull, J. 2023. Peregrine flights: the emergence of digital winged geographies. In Petri, O. and Guida, M. (Eds.) Winged Worlds: Common Spaces of Avian-Human Lives. London: Routledge.

2022

  • Eriksen, C. and Turnbull, J. 2022. Insure the volume? Sensing air, atmospheres, and radiation in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. In K. Booth, C. Lucas and S. French (eds.) Climate, Society and Elemental Insurance: Capacities and Limitations. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003157571-17.

2021

  • Alexis-Martin, B., Turnbull, J., et al. 2021. Nuclear Geographies and Nuclear Issues. In D. Richardson, N. Castree, M.F. Goodchild, A. Kobayashi, W. Liu and R.A. Marston (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg2109.

Links

Subject notes for courses taught at Jesus College:

See also Jonathon’s personal website and the School of Geography and the Environment profile.