Dr Anna Plyushteva

Anna is Titular Associate Professor in Human Geography at the Transport Studies Unit (TSU), School of Geography & the Environment (SoGE). Anna was previously Departmental Research Lecturer at the TSU and SoGE (2019-2025), having worked as Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Free University Brussels (2017-2019).

Anna is a Human Geographer who studies urban inequalities through a focus on infrastructures, economies, and mobilities. Her current research is about transport infrastructures and urban futures, exploring links between top-down public narratives on the future of mobility, and everyday practices of anticipation, worry, and hope. Anna has conducted research in cities globally, with a current focus on South-East Europe and the UK. A commitment to inclusive methodologies, knowledge co-creation, and an ethics of care is at the heart of her approach to research, teaching, and engagement.

Anna holds a PhD (2016) in Human Geography from University College London and a Master’s degree (2009) from the University of Amsterdam. Her work has been funded by the ESRC, EC Horizon 2020, and the Oxford John Fell Fund.

Care, gender, and mobility. Anna is Co-I on the ESRC-funded project Care on the Move (2024-2026, PI Middleton), which focuses on the everyday mobilities of children with non-visible disabilities in Oxford and Swindon. She has previously researched care, gender, and mobility in Manila, the Philippines, and London, UK.

Urban infrastructure futures. Current work under this theme examines the enactment of reversibility in the production of urban infrastructure futures in Bulgaria and the UK.

Everyday economies. This strand of Anna’s work draws on economic sociology and feminist geography to understand how households navigate emotional-economic relations. Recent work under this theme has focused on transport affordability as a situated relation; the moral arguments around ‘fare evasion’; and the negotiation of money worries within intimate relationships.

Anna teaches on the FHS option in Transport & Mobilities, and convenes the MSc elective in Urban Infrastructure Futures. She also contributes to the MSc in Sustainable Urban Development and the executive education programme in Global Challenges in Transport.

Anna supervises MSc dissertations and doctoral research at the School of Geography and the Environment. She is not currently accepting new research students.

Current Graduate Research Students

Anna strives to build lasting collaborations with partners beyond academia. The project Care on the Move is a collaboration with local and national organisations, including Swindon SEND Families Voice, SENDIASS Oxfordshire, and Living Streets. Previously, Anna has worked with essential workers during the Covid-19 pandemic to document their everyday experiences, and collaborated with Lancashire County Council and Jacobs on intersectional approaches to inclusive transport infrastructure appraisal. She has 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.

Plyushteva, A. (2025) Worrying the right amount: intimate relationships and the emotional work of pursuing financial literacy together, Economy and Society.

Munoz Zech, D., Lee, K. and Plyushteva, A. (2024) Beyond fare evasion: the everyday moralities of non-payment and underpayment on public transport. Mobilities [Preprint].

Plyushteva, A. (2023). Affording mobility: Attending to the socio-material affordances of transport un/affordability. Journal of Transport Geography, 108, 103558.

Plyushteva, A. (2022) Essential workers’ pandemic mobilities and the changing meanings of the commute. Geographical Journal, 188(3), pp. 459–463.

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].

See Google Scholar for full overview of publications