Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford

• Departmental Research Lecturer in Transport Studies

• Email: anna.plyushteva@ouce.ox.ac.uk

About

Anna is Departmental Research Lecturer in Transport Studies at the School of Geography and the Environment and the Transport Studies Unit. She was appointed in 2019, having previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Geography, Free University Brussels (2017-2019), and as a Research Associate and Programme Coordinator at the TSU (2016).

In these roles, she has conducted research on workplace mobility planning in Brussels and Sofia (funded by an EC Horizon2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant), examined gendered mobilities and flood risk in London and Manila as part of the Sustainable Cities and Resilient Transport project (funded by the British Council Newton Fund), and completed doctoral research on new transport infrastructure in Sofia (UK Economic and Social Research Council). She was also a member of the Brussels Centre Observatory (2017-2019) and serves on the editorial board of Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies.

Anna completed her PhD in Human Geography at University College London (2016), and also holds an MSc in International Development Studies (distinction; 2009) from the University of Amsterdam.

Current Research

Anna is an urban and transport geographer. Her current research focuses on three dimensions of urban transport and mobility: everyday practices; socio-technical infrastructures; and gendered relations. Anna’s work uses mixed methods, drawing predominantly on qualitative and longitudinal approaches, to explore these three broad themes within the context of:

• Work, workplace social relations, and commuting
• Transport fares, technologies of paying, and affordable mobility
• Gendered household relations and mobility biographies
• Night-time urban mobility.

Outreach

Anna’s research often involves collaborating with transport and mobility actors beyond academia. To date, she has worked on a pilot project to encourage walking to school for Sofia Municipality, conducted applied research on workplace sustainable mobility planning, contributed to a UK Department for Transport report on young people’s changing travel habits, and collaborated with mobility and urban planning advocacy group Spasi Sofia.

Publications

Journal Articles

• 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: 41-50.
• Plyushteva, A. (2019) Commutes and co-workers: complicating individual journeys through workplace relations. Built Environment, 45(4): 513-530.
• 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): 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: 131-141.
• Barnfield, A. and Plyushteva, A. (2016) Cycling in the post-socialist city: On travelling by bicycle in Sofia, Bulgaria. Urban Studies, 53(9): 1822-1835.
• Cook, S., Davidson, A., Stratford, E., Middleton, J., Plyushteva, A., Fitt, H., Cranston, S., Simpson, P., Delaney, H., Evans, K., Jones, A., Kershaw, J., Williams, N., Bissell, D., Duncan, T., Sengers, F., Elvy, J. and Wilmott, C. (2016) Co-Producing Mobilities: negotiating geographical knowledge in a conference session on the move. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 40(3): 340-374.

Book Chapters

• Plyushteva, A. and Barnfield, A. (forthcoming) Navigating cycling infrastructure in a post-socialist city. In, Koglin, T. and Cox, P. (eds.) The Politics of Cycling Infrastructure: Spaces and (In)equality. Bristol: Policy Press.
• Plyushteva, A. (2019) Predictability and propinquity on the Sofia Metro: Everyday metro journeys and long-term relations of transport infrastructuring. Chapter 11 in, Tuvikene, T., Sgibnev, W. and Neugebauer, C.S. (eds.) Post-Socialist Urban Infrastructures. Routledge, London. pp. 178-194.

Edited Special Issue

• Plyushteva, A., Mineva, M. and Nikolova, H. (2019) The Urban Night: Governance, Diversity, Mobility. University of National and World Economy Yearbook, 2019(1, 2).