OUPPS (Open University People Profile System)

Biography

Professional biography

I began my academic life at the University of Lancaster with a degree in Religious Studies, following this with a MA at The Open University in 2012. Partway through the MA, I realised that geography provided the lens on everyday life, structures and beliefs that I had been looking for so packed my bags and headed to University of the West of England in Bristol to pursue a PhD exploring the personal practice of religion and spirituality through the new mobilities framework. I have since completed a MSc degree in Education.

Since completing my PhD in 2016, I have worked on a variety of projects including understanding resident’s perceptions of economic migrants and as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate on the ESRC funded Smart Cities in the Making: Learning from Milton Keynes project. I have also published on contemporary wassailing practices, enchantment and 'tradition'.

Currently I am a Staff Tutor in the Geography Department, supporting level 1 and 2 Social Science modules.

Research interests

Research interests include: smart and urban geographies, sacred space, geographies of religion and spirituality and globalisation and migration.

Selected Publications:

Wigley, E., (2019 – online first), ‘A Place of Magic: Enchanting geographies of contemporary wassailing practices’, Social and Cultural Geography.

Wigley, E., (2019 – online first), ‘Wassail! Reinventing ‘tradition’ in contemporary wassailing customs in southern England’, Cultural Geographies.

Wigley, E., (2018), ‘Constructing subjective spiritual geographies in everyday mobilities: the practice of prayer and meditation in corporeal travel’ Social and Cultural Geography, vol.19, no.8, pp.984-1005

Wigley, E., (2018), ‘Everyday mobilities and the construction of subjective spiritual geographies’, Mobilities, vol.13, no.3

Teaching interests

I have taught on a variety of topics drawing from geographies of national and ethnic identity, people and place, social and cultural geography, urban geography and mobilities, globalisation and migration, sociologies of ageing, religion and spirituality.

Projects

Wudu in Public Spaces

This project investigates Muslim experiences of performing the essential practice of wudu in public spaces and these sites of multicultural encounter with non-Muslims and body politics. Wudu, the practice of washing before prayer, is performed by many Muslims in Britain, often several times every day. As intimate bodily practice, wudu can seem strange and mysterious to non-Muslims, potentially reinforcing negative or orientalist (Sibley and Fadli, 2009) attitudes towards Muslims. Whilst mosques and some organisations provide purpose-built wudu facilities, most employers and organisations in the UK do not, leading to dissatisfactory experiences for Muslim and the potential for misunderstanding amongst non-Muslims. The ‘everyday’ practice of wudu becomes a subtle site of marginalisation, contestation and confrontation in ‘secular’, public spaces. As the British Muslim population grows, there is an urgent need to explore the challenges faced by Muslims and employers in enabling wudu and to de-mystify wudu amongst non-Muslims. This study addresses an absence of research, building upon a scoping study conducted in 2017 and an ongoing public survey in 2019, the project will survey British universities, airports and employers as well as Muslim’s personal experience of, and challenges in performing, wudu in everyday spaces.