Staff Profile

My work has spanned social and political geography with separate but inter-connected interests in geographies of childhood and young people, emotions, racism and anti-racism, marginalised migration and human trafficking, and academia. What brings these themes together is the focus on agency and commitment to critical collaborative praxis with partners from within and outside the university.

As a pedagogue, I am particularly interested in the interrelated themes of mental health and inequalities in higher education. 

I welcome undergraduate/Masters dissertation, PhD, post-doctoral and/or collaborative proposals in any of these areas.

Before coming to Newcastle in 2017, I was a lecturer at the Loughborough University (2012-2016) and a researcher for the International Organization for migration (2012-2013).

I am Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and member of the Geography and Education Research Group committee, Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy, Managing Editor of ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies and Editorial Board member of the RGS-IBG Book Series and of the journal Children's Geographies (where I served seven years as Associate Editor/Co-Editor/Editor-in-Chief, and the journal remains very dear to me...). Other external activities include external examination for University of Birmingham (MSc Human Geography Research) and Edge Hill University (BA Childhood and Youth Studies), and membership on the International Expert Panel of the Slovak Research and Development Agency.

Google Scholar

SCOPUS

My main interest is in how people too often found to lack capacities to act can transform their lives, their communities, and the world far beyond; and how structural factors of inequality and oppression often operate outside the better-understood spaces, scales and rhythms. For a decade or so, my research evolved around two areas: childhood and marginalised migrants; while more recently, I have found interest particularly in i) post-socialist geographies of racism; ii) Roma geographies, and iii) inequalities, mental health and emotional politics of higher education. I am open to collaborations - or just general chats - with academics and non-academics interested in any of these topics.

Also very happy to hear from students (postgraduate and undergraduate) and early career scholars looking for supervision, support or just a listening ear on these themes. I prefer to work collaboratively, believe in reciprocal generosity, and my commitment is to fair engagement with students, academics and partners from outside academia.

From 2023/24 I am the Newcastle University lead for the Children and Young People pathway of the NINE Doctoral Training Partnership and happy to discuss the application process with prospective students and supervisors.

(Some publications linked below should be freely accessible via Newcastle University depository or my ResearchGate profile. If they are not, I am happy to share them directly.)

My education focused roles in 2024/25 include:

• Director of Undergraduate Studies for Geography programmes (BA in Geography, BSc in Geography, BSc in Physical Geography)
• Module Lead for GEO2128 Emotional Geographies of the City
• Module Co-Lead for GEO3148 Emotional Geographies of Everyday Life
• Module Lead for GEO8032 Children and Young People: Contemporary Global Challenges
• Personal Tutor and Dissertation Mentor

• Articles

  • Blazek M. Children’s geographies II: Adults. Progress in Human Geography 2025, 49(1), 119-130.
  • Children's Geographies. Editorial statement on violence against children and a call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Children's Geographies 2024, 22(2), 195-196.
  • Blazek M. Children’s geographies I: Decoloniality. Progress in Human Geography 2024, 48(2), 224-235.
  • Blazek M, Stenning A. Teaching and learning emotional geographies. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 2023, 47(5), 697-705.
  • Shaw R, Blazek M. Politics of rhythm and crisis in the slow death of higher education: implications for academic work and student support. Critical Studies in Education 2023, 65(3), 276-293.
  • Blazek M, Stenning A. Neoliberal subjectivities and the teaching and learning of emotional geographies. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 2023, 47(5), 755-772.
  • Blazek M. Children's right to be hostile: Emotions and agency through psychodynamic lens. Emotion, Space and Society 2021, 41, 100850.
  • Cheung Judge R, Blazek M, Esson J. Editorial: Transnational youth mobilities: Emotions, inequities, and temporalities. Population, Space and Place 2020, 26(6), e2307.
  • Blazek M, Esson J, Smith DP. Relational geographies of human trafficking: inequality, manoeuvring and im/mobility across space and time. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2019, 44(1), 63-78.
  • Blazek M, Askins K. For a relationship perspective on geographical ethics. Area 2019, 52(3), 464-471.
  • Blazek M, Esson J. The absent presence: children’s place in narratives of human trafficking. Area 2018, 51(2), 324-331.
  • Blazek M, Suska P. Towards dialogic post-socialism: Relational geographies of Europe and the notion of community in urban activism in Bratislava . Political Geography 2017, 61, 46-56.
  • Askins K, Blazek M. Feeling our way: academia, emotions and a politics of care. Social & Cultural Geography 2017, 18(8), 1086-1105.
  • Smith FM, Blazek M, Brown DM, van Blerk L. 'It's good but it's not enough': the relational geographies of social policy and youth mentoring interventions. Social & Cultural Geography 2016, 17(7), 959-979.
  • Blazek M, Smith FM, Lemešová M, Hricová P. Ethics of care across professional and everyday positionalities: The (un)expected impacts of participatory video with young female carers in Slovakia. Geoforum 2015, 61, 45-55.
  • Blazek M. Migration, vulnerability and the complexity of violence: Experiences of documented non-EU migrants in Slovakia. Geoforum 2014, 56, 101-112.
  • Blazek M. Emotions as practice: Anna Freud's child psychoanalysis and thinking-doing children's emotional geographies. Emotion, Space and Society 2013, 9, 24-32.
  • Blazek M, Hranova P. Emerging relationships and diverse motivations and benefits in participatory video with young people. Children's Geographies 2012, 10(2), 151-168.
  • Blazek M. Place, children's friendships, and the formation of gender identities in a Slovak urban neighbourhood. Children's Geographies 2011, 9(3-4), 285-302.

• Authored Book

  • Blazek M. Rematerialising Children's Agency: Everyday Practices in a Post-Socialist Estate. Bristol: Policy Press, 2015.

• Book Chapters

  • Blazek M, Askins K. Volunteer-Practitioner Research, Relationships and Friendship-Liness: Re-Enacting Geographies of Care. In: Miggelbrink, J; Hörschelmann, K; Henn, S, ed. Research Ethics in Human Geography. Principles, Practices, and Perspectives. London, UK: Routledge, 2021.
  • Blazek M. Children and Young People's Emotional Geographies. In: Skelton, T; Aitken, S, ed. Establishing Geographies of Children and Young People. New York: Springer, 2018.
  • Smith FM, Blazek M, Brown DM, van Blerk L. The relational spaces of mentoring with young people 'at risk'. In: Jupp, Eleanor; Pykett, Jessica; Smith, Fiona M, ed. Emotional States: Sites and spaces of affective governance. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017.
  • Blazek M. Participatory video with children and young people. In: Evans, Ruth; Holt, Louise; Skelton, Tracey, ed. Methodological Approaches. Singapore: Springer, 2017, pp.243-260.
  • Blazek M, Hricová P. Understanding (how to be with) children's emotions: relationships, spaces and politics of reconnection in reflections from detached youth work. In: Kraftl, Peter, ed. Children's Emotions in Policy and Practice: Mapping and Making Spaces of Childhood. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp.204-220.
  • Kraftl P, Blazek M. Mapping and making spaces of childhood. In: Kraftl, Peter, ed. Children's Emotions in Policy and Practice: Mapping and Making Spaces of Childhood. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp.291-307.
  • Blazek M. Labour exploitation of non-EU migrants in Slovakia: patterns, implications and structural violence. In: Craig, G., Waite, L., Lewis, H., Skrivankova, K, ed. Vulnerability, Exploitation and Migrants: Insecure Work in a Globalised Economy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp.72-85.
  • Blazek M, Kraftl P. Introduction: children's emotions in policy and practice. In: Blazek, M. and Kraft, P, ed. Children's Emotions in Policy and Practice: Mapping and Making Spaces of Childhood. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp.1-16.
  • Blazek M. Children's emotional geographies: politics of difference and practices of engagement. In: Hackett, Abigail; Procter, Lisa; Seymour, Julie, ed. Children's Spatialities: Embodiment, Emotion and Agency. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp.95-111.

• Edited Books

  • Hopkins P, Newcastle Social Geographies Collective, Pain R, Shaw R, Gao Q, Bonnett A, Jones C, Richardson M, Rzedzian S, Benwell MC, Lin W, McAreavey R, Stenning A, Blazek M, Pande R, Najib K, Finlay R, Nayak A, Ridley G, Mearns G, Bonner-Thompson C, McLaughlin J, Boussalem A, Iqbal N, Heslop J, Jarvis H, Burrows R, Bambra C, Copeland A, Tate S, Campbell E, Thompson M, James A, Raynor R, Cunningham N, Powells G, Herbert J, Hocknell S, ed. Social Geographies: An Introduction. London, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021.
  • Blazek M, Kraftl P, ed. Children’s Emotions in Policy and Practice: Mapping and Making Spaces of Childhood. London: Palgrave, 2015.

• Editorials

  • Holt L, Blazek M, Benwell MC, Van Blerk L. Editorial introduction to Children's Geographies sponsored lecture section: generational orderings and Geographies of Children and Youth. Children's Geographies 2020, 18(2), 125-127.
  • Blazek M, Windram-Geddes M. Editorial: Thinking and doing children's emotional geographies. Emotion, Space and Society 2013, 9, 1-3.