
Contact Information
Biography
My undergraduate degree (Combined Studies) is from the University of Leicester in the UK and my MA and PhD (both in Geography) are from the Ohio State University. Prior to coming to the University of Washington, I was at the University of Toronto. I teach classes on urban geography, the geographies of inequalities and feminist geographies. I am also the former Director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies.
My research spans feminist, economic, social and political geographies, particularly in terms of the relationships between care, paid work and the home, and the interconnections between inequalities, social reproduction and the state, primarily in urban North America. In general I explore the shifting contours of care work, welfare and the meanings of home associated with neoliberal social policy reforms. Currently my focus is on the migration of care workers, domestic workers’ activism and workplace rights.
In earlier projects I examined local clerical labor markets and the suburbanization of office work; the gendering of urban spaces and feminist urban politics; parents’ child-care strategies and the experiences of live-in domestic workers and nannies. I have an ongoing interest in the interconnections between critical theories, epistemologies and research methods, including the politics and ethics of doing research.
Please visit my personal website to learn more.
Research
Selected Research
- Kim England and Caitlin Alcorn (2018) "Growing care gaps, shrinking state? Home care workers and the Fair Labor Standards Act" Cambridge Journal of Regions Economy and Society, 11(3):443-457
- Karin Schwiter, Kendra Strauss and Kim England (2018) “At home with the boss: Live-in elder care workers in Austria, Canada, Switzerland and the UK,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,43(3): 462-476
- Kim England (2018) “Women in the Office: Clerical Work, Modernity and Workplaces” in Alexandra Staub (ed.) Routledge Companion to Modernity, Space and Modernity, Space and Gender, Routledge: New York, pp. 86-99.
- Kim England (2017) "Home, Domestic Work and the State: The Spatial Politics of Domestic Workers Activism," Critical Social Policy, 37(3): 367-385.
- Kim England and Kevin Ward (2016) “Theorizing Neoliberalization” in Simon Springer, Kean Birch and Julie MacLeavy (eds.) The Handbook of Neoliberalism. Routledge: London.
- Kim England (2015) “Producing Feminist Geographies: Theory, Methodologies and Research Strategies,” in Stuart Aitkin and Gill Valentine (eds.) Approaches to Human Geography (2nd Edition), pp. 361-372.
- Kim England (2015) “Nurses across Borders: Global Migration of Registered Nurses to the US” Gender Place and Culture, 22(1): 143-156
- Kim England and Isabel Dyck (2011) “Managing the Body Work of Home Care” Sociology of Health and Illness, 33 (2): 206-219
- Kim England and Kate Boyer (2009) “Women’s Work: The Feminization and Shifting Meanings of Clerical Work” Journal of Social History, 43(2): 307-340
- Kim England and Kevin Ward (2007) Neoliberalization: Networks, States, Peoples, International Antipode/Blackwell book series.
- Kim England (2003) “Disabilities, Gender and Employment: Social Exclusion, Employment Equity and Canadian Banking” The Canadian Geographer, 47(4): 429-450
- Bernadette Stiell and Kim England (1997) “Domestic Distinctions: Constructing Difference among Paid Domestic Workers in Toronto,” Gender, Place, and Culture, 4(3): 339-359
- Kim England (1996) Who Will Mind the Baby? Geographies of Child-Care and Working Mothers, Routledge: London and New York.
- Kim England (1994) “Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality and Feminist Research,” The Professional Geographer, 46(1): 80-89
Research Advised
- Thompson, S. (2023). Caring in Crises: Spatializing Infrastructures of Care Through Tenant Protections [Dissertation]. University of Washington.
- Cleasby, E., & England, K. (2021). Possibilities for sustainable futurity : examining the radical potential of small, mobile living structures and the Capitol Hill Organized Protest in achieving sustainability. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Alcorn, C. M., & England, K. (2021). New labor rights and new work arrangements : shifting geographies of paid domestic work in urban Brazil. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Hur, S., & England, K. (2020). Feeling toward decoloniality : transnational solidarity efforts to seek redress for survivors of war violence. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Porter, J., & England, K. (2018). Recuperando la tierra : understanding the legacies of social movements through the entanglement of home and urban housing landscapes in Costa Rica. [University of Washington Libraries].
Courses Taught
Winter 2026
Autumn 2025
Spring 2025
Winter 2025
Autumn 2024
Spring 2024
Spring 2023
Spring 2022
Winter 2022
GEOG 476: Women and the City
GEOG 577: Research Seminar: Urban Geographies