Professor Martin Phillips

I have research interests in society/environment relations, rural social and cultural geography, historical geography, and philosophy and social theory in geography. Much of my work focuses on material and symbolic constructions of rural space, with this research including studies of Net-Zero climate change mitigation and adaptation transitions, rural energy geographies, nature and landscape transformations, comparative research, rural gentrification, rural service decline and processes of social and more-than-human displacement.  I currently co-lead the work package on transdisciplinary research on the UKRI's Land Use for Net Zero (LUNZ) Hub and was formerly a member of the Programme Coordination Team of UKRI's Landscape Decisionprogramme. I relation to these Hubs and programmes, I am undertaking research addressing issues of rural land use change and their impacts on climate mitigation and adaptation, environmental and social justice, landscape and nature relations and sense of identity and belonging. Other current research interests include studies of rural energy and water consumption, rural service provisions and the significance of the state in rural areas, heritage and museum geographies, sociologies of knowledge, filmic geographies and the symbolic and affective dimensions of rural change. I am Research Director Rural England and a member of the AHRC and ESRC Peer Review Colleges, as well as a recent Chair of the Rural Geography Research Group.

My current research includes working as a co-lead of a work package on transdisciplinary research and community building in the Land Use for Net Zero (LUNZ) Hub , which is funded by the UKRI, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs of Northern Ireland, and the Scottish Government. My work in the LUNZHub includes examinations land use and Net Zero policy development and engagement, changes in land use and management, attitudes to technological development, and social justice dimensions of Net Zero land use transitions. 

I am currently also undertaking research on rural disaster gentrification, exploring how the Covid-19 pandemic and climate related events such as flooding and wild fires, as well as attempts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, have fostered new forms of gentrification related population movements, investments and displacements. This connects to earlier research examining the gentrification of rural natures, developed as part of the Rural Economy and Land Use Programme, as well as to other research conducted on climate change mitigation and adaptation in rural areas.

Prior to my involvement in the LUNZ Hub, I was part of Programme Co-Ordination Team of the UKRI Landscape Decisions programme, where I also led the development of transdisciplinary research. Particular areas of work included examinations of the significance of values and scale in landscape decision making. I was also involved in a project funded by the Local Government Association exploring public engagement with Net Zero action in Leicestershire and in a project funded by the University's Leicester Institute of Advanced Studies related to the emergence and implementation of concept of Net Zero within and beyond the UK.

Other research activities relate to completing studies commissioned by Rural England, including a study of energy and water consumption and attitudes towards Net Zero, as well as writing up research from a series of UKRI funded research projects, including: Explorations in comparative ruralism in the UK and Japan AHRC/ESRC UK Connections Programme (2020/2021);  International Rural Gentrification (ESRC ANR and NSF Overseas Research Area, 2014-2019);  and Co-Designing Asset Mapping (2014-2015); Evaluating the Legacy of Animate and Iterative Connected Communities Projects (2014-2015); Affective Digital Histories (2013-2015); Unearthing Hidden Assets Through Community Co-Design and Co-Production (2012-2014); and Revisiting the Mid-Point of British Communities (2012-2013) all funded as part of the AHRC's Connected Communities programme.

Recent publications include:

Phillips, M. (2025) Towards a relational understanding of peripheralisation: an examination of English rural small towns. In Banski, J. (ed.) Research Companion to the Periphery and Peripheral Regions (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar), pp. 44-62.

Geary Griffin, R. and Phillips, M. (2024) The farm shop as a retroscaped place of experiential consumption. Sociologia Ruralis 64(4), 613-638

Ofoegbu, C., Balzter, H. and Phillips, M. (2023) Evidence synthesis towards a holistic landscape decision framework: Insight from the Landscape Decisions Programme. Land 12(8), 1543

Ingram, J., Maye, D., Bailye, C., Barnes, A., Bear, C., Bell, M., Cutress, D., Davies^, L., de Boon, A., Dinnie, L., Gairdner, J., Hafferty, C., Holloway, L., Kindred, L., Kirby, D., Leake, B., Manning, L., Marchant, B., Morse, A., Oxley, S., Phillips, M., Regan, A., Rial-Lovera, K., Rose, D.C., Schillings, J., Williams, F., Williams, H., Wilson, L. (2022) What are the priority research questions for digital agriculture?' Land Use Policy, 114, 105962.

Johansen, P.H. Jens Kaae Fisker, J.K. & Phillips, M. (2023) 'Framing Essay'. In Johansen, P.H., Tietjen, A., Iversen, E.B., Lolle, H.L., & Fisker, J.K. (eds.) Quality of Life in the Countryside (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 17-22.

Phillips, M. (2023) ‘Landscape', In Demeritt, D. & Lees, L. (eds) Concise Encyclopedia of Human Geography (London: Edward Elgar Publishing), pp. 217-222.

Phillips, M., Smith, D., Brooking, H. and Duer, M. (2023) ‘Everyone loves living here’: life beyond the idyll within the gentrified countryside'. In Johansen, P.H., Tietjen, A., Iversen, E.B., Lolle, H.L., & Fisker, J.K. (eds.) Quality of Life in the Countryside (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 55-73.

Phillips, M. and Smith, D. (2022)  'Comparative approaches to gentrification: lessons from the rural'. In Lees, L. Slater, T. and Wyly, E. (eds) The Planetary Gentrification Reader (2^nd edn., London: Routledge), pp. 147-173.

Phillips, M., Smith, D. Brooking, H. and Duer, M. (2021) 'The agencies of living-landscapes in rural gentrification: impressions from the wood, the village and the moortop'. Sociologia Ruralis, 61 (4), 778-807.

Phillips, M., Smith, D. Brooking, H. and Duer, M. (2021) 'Re-placing displacement in gentrification studies: temporality and multi-dimensionality in rural gentrification displacement', Geoforum 118, 66-82.

Smith, D.P., Phillips, M., Kinton, C. and Culora, A. (2021) 'The (im)mobilities of gentrifers and the temporalities of rural gentrification', Population, Space and Place, 27 (7), 27, e2496

Phillips, M. and Dickie, J. (2019) 'Moving to or from a carbon dependent countryside', Journal of Transport Geography, 74, pp. 253-268.

Phillips, M. and Dickie, J. (2019) 'Post carbon ruralities', in Scott, M., Gallent, N. and Gkartzios, M. (eds.) Routledge Companion to Rural Planning (London: Routledge), pp. 521-547.

Smith, D.P., Phillips, M., Kinton, C. and Culora, A. (2019) 'Rural population geographies in the changing differentiated countryside', in Scott, M., Gallent, N. and Gkartzios, M. (eds.) Routledge Companion to Rural Planning (London: Routledge), pp. 239-260

Smith, D., Phillips, M., Brooking, H. and Duer, M. (2019) 'The dynamics of rural gentrification and the effects of ageing on gentrified rural places', Ager: Journal of Depopulation and Rural Development Studies 27, 129-157.

Lam B, Phillips M., Kelemen M., Zamenopoulos T., Moffat S, de Sousa S. (2018) 'Design and creative methods as a practice of liminality in community-academic research projects'. The Design Journal 21, pp. 1-20.

Phillips, M. and Smith, D. (2018) 'Comparative approaches to gentrification: lessons from the rural', Dialogues in Human Geography 8 (1), 3-25

Phillips, M. (2018) 'Gentrification and landscape change', in Lees, L. and Phillips, M. (eds) Handbook of Gentrification (London: Edward Elgar Publishing), pp. 81-102

I am interested in supervising research students in the following research areas: Affective geographies of landscape, nature, community and heritage; Affordance and environmental perception; Agricultural transformations; Attitudes and behaviours related to climate change; Energy geographies; Gentrification; Museum Geographies; Rural migration and mobilities; Rural social exclusion and displacement; Representations of rurality and nature; Rural landscape transformation; Social class formation and recomposition; and Symbolic emotional and affective geographies of community.

I am particularly interested in supervising students on the following topics: Carbonised countrysides and low carbon transitions; Changing cultural representations of the countryside; Digital agriculture; Environmental and social justice in Net Zero transitions; more-than-representational geographies of landscape; Rural and urban gentrification; Representations of past present and future natures; and Symbolic and affective constructions of community.

I currently teach on the following modules: GY1411 Human Geography for a Globalised World; GY2414 Research Design and Methods; GY2415 Geographical Research in the Field; GY3417 Critical Symbolic and Emotional Rural Geographies; GY7411 Contemporary Critical Geographies; GY7412 Creative Geographies in Practice; and GY7420/7720 Dissertation

Rural social change; Rural landscape change; Attitudes to climate change and climate change mitigation policies.

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts;  Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society;  Member of the AHRC and ESRC Peer Review Colleges; Chair of the Rural Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society; Affiliate member of the Community Animation and Social Innovation Centre, University of Keele; Member of the Research Centre for Co-Creating Systems of Regional Planning and Management, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan.