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Dr Anna Plyushteva

Departmental Research Lecturer in Transport Studies

About

Anna is Departmental Research Lecturer at the School of Geography and the Environment and the Transport Studies Unit. Anna's current work is organised around three key themes: unequal mobilities; infrastructures and the socio-material organisation of cities; everyday economies.

Anna was appointed in 2019, having previously worked as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Free University Brussels (2017-2019), and Research Associate and Programme Coordinator at the Transport Studies Unit (2016). Her work draws on a range of mostly qualitative methods and currently focuses on South-East Europe and the UK. Anna's doctoral research at University College London (2016) focused on new ways of understanding the impact of a new metro line on commuters in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Anna currently serves on the Executive Committee of the UTSG, and the SoGE Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Teaching and Supervision

  • Undergraduate teaching: Space, Place & Society; Transport & Mobilities
  • Graduate teaching: Urban Infrastructure Futures, Sustainable Urban Development
  • Executive education: Global Challenges in Transport: Infrastructures

Anna supervises MSc dissertations and doctoral students at the School of Geography and the Environment. She also serves as College Advisor to graduate students at St Antony's College.

 

Current Graduate Research Students

Ho-Yin (Tommy) ChanTowards resilient cities, communities and individuals: Cutting across the top-down-bottom-up dichotomy through citizen initiatives in everyday transport practices and planning
Sieun LeeCaring in the night-time city: filling the spatio-temporal gaps in childcare
Clive ParkinsonAutomobility as 'Dispositif' in Contemporary China

 

Outreach

Anna strives to build lasting collaborations with organisations beyond academia. In recent years, she has worked with essential workers during the Covid-19 pandemic to document their everyday experiences (see online archive), and collaborated with Lancashire County Council and Jacobs on intersectional approaches to gender as part of inclusive transport planning. She has previously contributed to 'walk to school' campaigns and workplace mobility planning strategies by Sofia Municipality; a UK Department for Transport report on young people's changing travel habits; and the campaign work of advocacy group Spasi Sofia.

Selected Publications

A full list is available via Google Scholar.

Publications
Hopkins, D. and Plyushteva, A. (2023) “Transport”, in Lees, L. and Demeritt, D. (eds.) Concise Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Edward Elgar.
Plyushteva, A. and Schwanen, T. (2022) “‘We usually have a bit of flood once a week’: conceptualising the infrastructural rhythms of urban floods in Malate, Manila”, Urban Geography [Preprint].
Plyushteva, A. (2022) “Negotiating dignity in public geography: the ethics of public engagement in pandemic times”, Area, 55(1), pp. 53–61.
Plyushteva, A. (2022) “Essential workers’ pandemic mobilities and the changing meanings of the commute”, Geographical Journal, 188(3), pp. 459–463.
Farina, L., Boussauw, K. and Plyushteva, A. (2021) “Moving safely at night? Women’s nocturnal mobilities in Recife, Brazil and Brussels, Belgium”, Gender, Place and Culture, 29(9), pp. 1229–1250.
Plyushteva, A. (2021) “Exploring the role of the workplace in experiences of commuter stress: a mixed-method study from Sofia, Bulgaria”, Social Sciences, 10(6).
Plyushteva, A. and Boussauw, K. (2020) “Does night-time public transport contribute to inclusive night mobility? Exploring Sofia’s night bus network from a gender perspective”, Transport Policy, 87, pp. 41–50.
Plyushteva, A. (2019) “Commutes and co-workers: complicating individual journeys through workplace relations”, Built Environment, 45(4), pp. 603–620.
Plyushteva, A. (2019) “Commuting and the urban night: nocturnal mobilities in tourism and hospitality work”, JOURNAL OF POLICY RESEARCH IN TOURISM LEISURE AND EVENTS, 11(3), pp. 407–421.
Plyushteva, A. and Schwanen, T. (2018) “Care-related journeys over the life course: Thinking mobility biographies with gender, care and the household”, Geoforum, 97, pp. 131–141.
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Dr Anna Plyushteva
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