Published: September 26, 2022
Written by: Dr Nicola Roberts
Dr Matthew Durey, Dr Nicola Roberts, and Professor Catherine Donovan (Durham University) contributed a chapter entitled ‘Negotiating landscapes of (un)safety: atmospheres and ambivalence in female students’ everyday geographies’ to the recently published collection Landscapes of Hate: Tracing Spaces, Relations and Responses published by Bristol University Press. This chapter reflects on qualitative data from a survey of students at a UK university exploring experiences of interpersonal violence and harassment. In the chapter, the authors draw on the ideas of atmosphere and ambivalence to explore how the material, social, and affective aspects of places come together in urban environments to create complex landscapes of (un)safety for female students. The chapter reports on female students’ everyday experiences of urban landscapes, and suggests that (un)safety, ambivalence, and everyday agency, as well as urban transformations, are important aspects of the ways in which female students encounter and negotiate urban landscapes.