Dr Angharad Closs Stephens

Associate Professor, Geography

Welsh language proficiency

Fluent Welsh Speaker
Academic Office - 207
Second Floor
Wallace Building
Singleton Campus
Available For Postgraduate Supervision

About

Angharad Closs Stephens is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Swansea University and author of two monographs on the politics of nationalism: National Affects: the everyday atmospheres of being political (Bloomsbury, 2022), and The Persistence of Nationalism: from imagined communities to urban encounters (Routledge, 2013).

At Swansea, she has served as Pathway leader for Human Geography for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); advanced initiatives in gender equality as Chair of the Athena SWAN Geography Self-Assessment Team (2016-2021), leading the Department to a Bronze Award in 2020; and convened the Department’s international seminar series (2016-19). She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and in 2022, she was nominated by her students and shortlisted for the Outstanding Research Supervision Award. Dr Closs Stephens is currently Director for Postgraduate Research for the Geography Department and co-convenes (with Dr Amanda Rogers) the interdisciplinary MSc in Society, Environment and Global Change.

Prior to arriving at Swansea, Dr Closs Stephens was Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Durham University (2007-2015) and completed her PhD in International Relations at Keele University (2008). She has a MRes in International Relations (Keele University, 2003) and MSc in Gender Studies (London School of Economics, 2001). In 2019, she was a visiting scholar at the Emerging Technologies Lab, Monash University, Australia, and in 2018, guest professor at the International Political Sociology Winter School, PUC-Rio (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Between 2014-17, she was assistant editor of Citizenship Studies, and she is currently an associate editor for the Welsh-language international journal, O’r Pedwar Gwynt. In 2017, she won the ‘Peer Review Prize for Excellence’ for her reviewing work for the journal, International Political Sociology.

Areas Of Expertise

  • Critical approaches to the study of nationalism;
  • Performance, art and politics;
  • Critical security studies;
  • Critical theories;
  • Creative and artistic methods;
  • Cultural and political geographies;
  • Cities and citizenship;
  • Affect, atmosphere

Career Highlights

Teaching Interests

Dr Closs Stephens introduced and convenes and teaches two key modules in the Department, ‘Political Geographies’ (level 2), and ‘Crises and Global Change’ (level 4). She co-founded (with Dr Amanda Rogers) the new MSc degree scheme in ‘Society, Environment and Global Change’. She contributes to a range of different modules in Geography, on topics including imagining community, migration, borders, space and place, power, resistance and global politics. She runs a field course to Berlin (with Dr Keith Halfacree). In 2021, she was awarded Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy and actively considers neurodiversity as part of her teaching. During her career, she has taught a range of postgraduate and undergraduate modules at Durham University; Keele University; Royal Holloway, University of London and Aberystwyth University. She has served as an external examiner at Aberystwyth University (2012-2016) and Exeter University (2019).

Research