Dr Georgie Wemyss
Senior Lecturer
CMRB and Social Sciences
Department of Social Sciences , School Of Education And Communities
Over the past three decades, Georgie Wemyss has been working at the intersections of anti-colonial scholarship and grass-roots activism in east London. Her research, teaching and publications connect theories of coloniality, anti-racism, bordering and belonging. She brings her research, activism and teaching expertise together as co-director of the Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging, through PhD and undergraduate supervision and in leading the Level 5 core module ‘Space, Power, Bodies’.
Qualifications
- University College London, BA in Anthropology and Geography 1982
- Institute of Education, University of London, PGCE (Distinction) 1988
- University of Sussex, MA in Social Anthropology 1992
- University of Sussex, D.Phil in Social Anthropology 2004
Areas Of Interest
- Everyday Bordering
- Britishness and Belonging
- Ethnographic methodologies
- Politics of memorialisation
- Colonial seafarer histories.
OVERVIEW
Georgie’s first book The Invisible Empire: white discourse, tolerance and belonging (Ashgate, 2009) was an ethnographic investigation, focused on East London’s regenerating docklands, into the repetitive burying of British Empire histories of violence in local and national political and media narratives.
Over the past decade she moved on to researching new conceptual approaches to analysing borders and bordering initially funded by the EUBorderscapes research project (2012-2016). Based on this work, Georgie and co-authors were awarded the annual prize for excellence and innovation by the journal Sociology for the paper Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Reorientation of British Immigration Legislation - Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss, Kathryn Cassidy, 2018 (sagepub.com).The same team also published the book Bordering (Polity, 2019). Georgie researched and produced the film Everyday Borders (2015, Director Orson Nava) as a learning resource.
Since 2020 she has returned to the docks researching colonial histories of present-day bordering regimes, see for example the article: Frontiers | Bordering seafarers at sea and onshore (frontiersin.org). She worked with the Thames Festival Trust in researching and presenting the film London’s Lost Village: Britain’s Invisible Empire (2023) Thames Festival Trust | London's Lost Village | Thames Festival Trust (scroll down to 7th film).
In parallel Georgie has been working with community projects developing and delivering Heritage Lottery funded projects that excavate and re-interpret colonial and histories with local links for example about in organising tours centred on coloniality and the East India Docks.
Georgie is co-investigator on the research project Statues and memories of empire in post-imperial France and Britain Cast in Stone – Statues and Memories of Empire in France and Britain (exeter.ac.uk)
MOST RECENT RESEARCH
- CAST IN STONE: Statues and memories of empire in post-imperial France and Britain Cast in Stone – Statues and Memories of Empire in France and Britain (exeter.ac.uk)
- British Empire, Seafaring and Belonging
- EU BORDERSCAPES: Bordering, Political Landscapes and Social Arenas: Potentials and Challenges of Evolving Border Concepts in a post-Cold War World.
RESEARCH AND IMPACT
- Compiled and co-wrote UoA Sociology Impact Case Study on Hostile Environment for REF 2021
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Monographs
- Yuval-Davis, N. Wemyss, G. Cassidy, K. (2019) Bordering. Cambridge: Polity Press.
- Wemyss, G. (2009). The Invisible Empire: White Discourse, Tolerance and Belonging, Farnham: Ashgate. (Reprinted 2016 by Routledge).
Peer reviewed journal articles
- Wemyss, G. 2023. Bordering seafarers at sea and onshore. Frontiers in Sociology. 7 (Art. 1084598). https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.1084598
- Patel, P., Wemyss, G. and Assiter, A. 2022. Editorial: Why Free Speech? Feminist Dissent. 6, pp. 1-38. https://doi.org/10.31273/fd.n6.2022.1261
- Wemyss, G. Yuval-Davis, N & Cassidy K. 2018. ‘Beauty and the Beast’: Everyday Bordering and Sham Marriage Discourse. Political Geography. 66:171-9.
- Yuval-Davis, N. Wemyss, G. & Cassidy, K. 2018. ‘Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Re-Orientation of British Immigration Legislation’. Sociology. 52 (2):228-44.
- Wemyss, G & Cassidy, K. (2017). “People think that Romanians and Roma are the same”: everyday bordering and the lifting of transitional controls. Ethnic and Racial Studies. Volume 40 (7):1132-50
- Yuval-Davis, N. Wemyss, G. Cassidy, K. 2017. ‘Introduction to the special issue: racialized bordering discourses on European Roma’. Ethnic and Racial Studies. Volume 40, (7):1-11.
- Wemyss, G. 2008. White Memories, White Belonging: Competing Colonial Anniversaries in ‘Postcolonial’ East London. Sociological Research Online, 13(5), 50–67. https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.1801
- Wemyss, G., 2006. Outside Extremists. White East Enders’, ‘Passive Bengalis’: tracking constructions, mobilisations and contestations of racial categories in media discourses’, Race Relations Abstract, 31(4), pp.21-47.
- Wemyss, G. 2006. The power to tolerate: contests over Britishness and belonging in East London, Patterns of Prejudice, 40:3, 215-236. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313220600769406
Book chapters
- Wemyss, G. 2024. (Forthcoming). Everyday (re)bordering the crisis. Silencing Crises / Making Crises Speak - The production of resilient bodies in times of crisis. Dorte Jagetic Andersen & Lola Aubry (eds), Berghahn.
- Yuval-Davis, N. and Wemyss, G., 2023. Everyday (Re) bordering. Oxford Publishing Services for Institute for Research in Superdiversity (IRiS), University of Birmingham, UK. Migration, displacement and diversity: the IRiS anthology is out – The Age of Superdiversity
- Wemyss, G. (2021) British Indian seafarers, bordering and belonging. In Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness (pp. 246-257). Routledge. Wemyss, G. British Indian Seafarers, Bordering and Belonging AM.pdf (uel.ac.uk)
- Wemyss, G. (2015) ‘Everyday Bordering and Raids Every Day: The Invisible Empire and Metropolitan Borderscapes’ in Borderscaping: Imaginations and Practices of Border Making, Chiara Brambilla, Jussi Laine, James W. Scott & Gianluca Bocchi (eds) Farnham: Ashgate. Everyday Bordering and Raids Every Day | 21 | The Invisible Empire and (taylorfrancis.com)
- Wemyss, G., 2011. Littoral struggles, liminal lives: Indian merchant seafarers’ resistances. South Asian Resistances in Britain, 1858-1947, p.35., South Asian Resistances in Britain, 1858 - 1947 - Google Books.
Film
- London’s Lost Village: Britain’s Invisible Empire (2023). Researched and presented by Georgie Wemyss. Thames Festival Trust. (scroll down to 7th film) Thames Festival Trust | London's Lost Village
- Everyday Borders (2015) Researched and produced by Georgie Wemyss.
- A Very British History - British Bangladeshis (2020) Consultant
Online articles
- Yuval-Davis, N. and Wemyss, G. (2020) ‘Bordering during the Pandemic’ Soundings. Summer.
- Tonkiss, K., Czajka, A., Bloom, T., Andreouli, E., Prabhat, D., Orchard, C., Yuval-Davis, N., Staples, K. and Wemyss, G. (2020). The Future of ‘Citizenship Policy’ in the UK.
- Wemyss, G. (2018). ‘Compliant Environment’: Turning ordinary people into borderguards should concern everyone in the UK’. The Conversation. 20 November.
- Wemyss, G., Cassidy, K and Yuval-Davis, N. (2017). ‘Welcome to Britain in 2017, where everybody is expected to be a border guard’. The Conversation. April 7.
- Yuval-Davis, N., Wemyss, G., Cassidy, K. ‘Changing the racialized ‘common sense’ of everyday bordering’ Open Democracy. February 2016.
Selected Conference Papers 2017-2022
- ‘Walking the Dock: transient pedagogy and the education-urban dynamic’, Education and Urban transformations: Marginalities and Intersections, German Historical Institute, London. 9-11 June 2022.
- ‘Analysing everyday bordering practices’. Online Seminar. Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR) – University of Ghent 26 April 2022
- ‘Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Approaches Migration and Diaspora’ 1st International Workshop on Research Methods and Approaches to Migration and Diaspora Studies (online) Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, India. 30 June 2020.
- ‘Everyday gendered state bordering and Belonging’ LSE Symposium: Politics of Bordering. 7 June 2019
- ‘The violence of everyday bordering’. Race, Violence and the City. LSE 6 June 2018.
- ‘Beyond the Vulnerable Subject: The ‘Politics of Harm’ and the British Families of Asylum Seekers’. Borders, Racisms, and Harms. Birkbeck. 2-3 May. 2018.
- ‘Everyday bordering, belonging and multicultural societies: situated bordering encounters and the post-Brexit continuum’ Keynote. Geopolitics: actors, practices and realities. University of Oulu, Finland, 22-23 November 2017. Keynote.
- ‘Everyday bordering and the politics of Brexit belongings’. Looking Ahead: Brexit, Borders and Belongings. ISS21 Migration & Integration Cluster and EU YMobility project. 10 March 2017. University College, Cork.
Podcasts
- BSA: Interview on prize winning article
- Portrait of a Londoner: Interview on CMRB work
Selected public engagement activities
- All Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community: Unearthing Invisible Seafaring Histories of Empire, Britishness & Belonging: A conversation with Clive Lewis MP, Asif Shakoor and Georgie Wemyss 5 June 2023. Jubilee Room, Westminster Hall
Online conversations
- From Sylhet to Spitalfields: Bengali Squatters in 1970s East London - YouTube - A discussion with author Dr Shabna Begum. Hosted by Dr Georgie Wemyss. Organised by Brick Lane Circle, 14 June 2023.
- Missing Medals: Unearthing Invisible Seafaring Histories of Empire - YouTube - Participant in East India Dock Basin ‘A Vision for Regeneration’ Stakeholder, Participation in bi-monthly stakeholder meetings contributing to the LUF and HLF bids due end of 2022.
- Contributory speaker, Spice Wars Story Project Launch, Brick Lane Circle. 8 June 2022 (Also delivered a dock walk for the project) Spice War Stories Project launch pictures and video - Brick Lane Circle
- Missing Medals: Unearthing invisible seafaring histories of Empire. Interview of Asif Shakoor. Museum of London Docklands Late Live Event. 29 April 2022.
- Missing Medals: Unearthing invisible seafaring histories of Empire. August Lecture. Interview of Asif Shakoor, online, Wellington Trust 9 August 2021 Missing Medals: Unearthing Invisible Seafaring Histories of Empire - The Wellington Trust
TEACHING
MODULES TAUGHT
- SY6002: Dissertation supervision
- SY5007: Space, Power, Bodies
- SY3006: Globalisation and Society
- PhD supervision
EXTERNAL ROLES
I am an experienced external examiner for PhDs in the UK and internationally.