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Staff Profile

Professor Helen Jarvis

Emeritus Professor of Social Geography Engagement

Background

Research


Helen Jarvis has an established international reputation in each of four intersecting strands of research and scholarship in urban social geography; (i) household work-life reconciliation, including intergenerational mutual support, ageing and the mobility; (ii) Public space, public life and accessible cities, understanding this holistically and relationally; (iii) ethnographies and infrastructures of time-space co-ordination, with a particular focus on the 'social architectures' of shared space and self-governance in collaborative living arrangements of intentional community and cohousing; (iv) new urban policies for sustainability, focussing on the green sharing economy and its roots in voluntary civic engagement.


Each strand of research engages with real-world problems. Scholarly publications include three books on Cities, Gender, Work/Life Balance and Social Reproduction and more than 20 solo-author peer-review articles in top ranking journals.


She is regularly invited to speak at international symposia and to provide opinion and debate on new urban policies for sustainability in national and international news media, including appearances on BBC Radio 4 programmes Today and Thinking Allowed. 


Helen has held visiting academic positions at UC Berkeley and University of Washington, USA and University of Western Sydney, Australia. She was ‘researcher in residence’ in the Freetown of Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2010. Helen previously served on the Cittaslow (slow cities) international scientific committee of advisors (2009-2019) and as non-executive Director of the UK Cohousing Network and Trust (2014-2018).


After 26 years employed at Newcastle University, promoted to Professor of Social Geography Engagement in 2020, Helen made the transition to Emeritus Professor in September 2024. 


Helen continues to champion the transformative potential of place-based community organising, and intentional communities of alternative home and family life, as a theory and practice of progressive social change and as a critical approach to the social purpose of community engagement in Higher Education institutions.


Helen is committed to engaging community stakeholders in collaborative research, nurturing interpersonal relationships with pioneer activists and civic leaders. She is actively engaged in the leadership of the broad-based community organising alliance Tyne and Wear Citizens (a chapter of Citizens UK)


Qualifications


PhD London School of Economics, 1997.

BSc (Econ) London School of Economics, 1994, First Class Honours.

Postgraduate Certificate in Community Organising, Newman College Birmingham, 2018.

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, 2019.


Google Scholar


 


Publications