TRANSPORT STUDIES UNIT

• Departmental Research Lecturer in Transport Studies

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

About

Anna is a Departmental Research Lecturer in Transport Studies at the School of Geography and the Environment and the Transport Studies Unit. Anna's research and teaching focus on urban mobility and transport infrastructures, specifically on the roles they play in the socio-material organisation of cities, different forms of inequality, and gendered social and spatial relations.

Anna was appointed in 2019, having previously worked as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Free University Brussels (2017-2019; funded by EC Horizon 2020), 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; ESRC funded) 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.

Current Research

• Transport fares and the socio-material relations of affordability. This project (funded by the OUP John Fell Fund) develops new theoretical and methodological approaches to transport affordability, drawing on science & technology studies, economic sociology, and feminist economic geography.
• Gendered and racialised impacts of new transport infrastructure. This project is a collaboration with partners from the private and public sectors. Focusing on the case study of the Pennine Reach rapid bus link in Lancashire, it takes a mixed-method approach to understanding the differentiated impact of transport schemes along gender and race/ethnicity lines. The project aims to develop a toolkit for accounting for these unequal impacts in transport appraisal.
• Commuting during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of a public engagement project (Not Working From Home, funded by the Wellcome Institutional Strategic Support Fund) this work focuses on the everyday mobilities of key workers. It highlights the difficulties and anxieties of travelling to work during the COVID-19 pandemic, and advocates for better transport & mobility provision for key workers in times of crisis. This research is also informed by Anna's earlier work on the challenges of night-time commuting.

Teaching and Supervision

Anna currently teaches on undergraduate and executive courses at the Transport Studies Unit and the School of Geography and the Environment. Since 2020/21, Anna has also been acting as College Advisor to a group of graduate students at St Antony's College. If you are considering applying for doctoral studies and your research interests are related to Anna's, please get in touch.

Outreach

Anna strives to build lasting collaborations with organisations beyond academia. She has worked on encouraging walking to school and on workplace mobility planning with Sofia Municipality, contributed to a UK Department for Transport report on young people's changing travel habits, been a member of the Brussels Centre Observatory, and collaborated with advocacy group Spasi Sofia.

Selected Publications

A full list is available via Google Scholar.

Journal Articles

• 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.
• 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.

Book Chapters

• Plyushteva, A. and Barnfield, A. (2020) 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. pp. 195-210.
• 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.

Reports

• Chatterjee, K., Goodwin, P., Schwanen, T., Clark, B., Jain, J., Melia, S., Middleton, J., Plyushteva, A., Ricci, M., Santos, G. and Stokes, G. (2018) Young People's Travel - What's Changed and Why? Review and Analysis. Report to Department for Transport. University of the West of England, Bristol.

Edited Special Issues

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