Rate My Professor Simon Springer

Simon Springer is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Newcastle, Australia, in the School of Environmental and Life Sciences, a position held since 2018. He served as Head of Discipline for Geography and Environmental Studies from 2019 to 2024 and Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies from 2018 to 2024. Since 2024, he has been Co-Director of the PLACED Centre for Collaborative Research. Previously, at the University of Victoria in Canada, he advanced from Assistant Professor (2012–2015) to Associate Professor (2015–2018) and Professor (2018). Earlier roles include Lecturer at the University of Otago, New Zealand (2010–2012), and Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore (2009–2010). Springer earned his PhD from the University of British Columbia, MA from Queen's University, and BA Honours from the University of Northern British Columbia.

His research focuses on social and political geography, particularly anarchist philosophy, with fields of research encompassing urban geography (30%), development geography (30%), and political geography (40%). Key interests include Cambodia, neoliberalism, violence, homelessness, and peace and conflict studies. Springer has published extensively, including books such as Cambodia's Neoliberal Order: Violence, Authoritarianism, and the Contestation of Public Space (2010, Routledge), Violent Neoliberalism: Development, Discourse and Dispossession in Cambodia (2015, Palgrave Macmillan), The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation (2016, University of Minnesota Press), Inhabiting the Earth: Anarchist Political Ecology for Landscapes of Emancipation (2021, University of California Press), and Towards Anti-policing: Prefiguring Possibilities Beyond the Thin Blue Line (2024, Lexington Books). Notable papers feature "Neoliberalism as discourse: Between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism" (2012, Critical Discourse Studies) and "Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies" (2011, Political Geography). Awards include the Sovereign's Medal for Volunteers (2018), University of Victoria's Early Career Research Excellence Award (2018), American Association of Geographers' Stanley D. Brunn Young Scholar Award (2016), and Canadian Association of Geographers' Julian M. Szeicz Award (2016). He was Editor of ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies (2015–2021) and has given numerous public lectures on anarchist geography and homelessness.