Dr Elsa Noterman

Profile

I am interested in questions related to everyday collective struggles over land and housing. To consider these questions, I draw on critical legal, feminist, decolonial and antiracist theories of property and social reproduction. The way that I approach these questions is also informed by my background in community organizing, public education, and community development.

At QMUL, I am a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, a Fellow of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Director of the City Centre. I joined QMUL in September 2022 from Queens’ College, University of Cambridge where I was a Junior Research Fellow (2020-2022) and Director of Studies for Geography (2021-2022). I received my PhD and MS in Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

My research bridges conversations in the social sciences and humanities, and draws on qualitative, critical cartographic, and participatory research methods. It involves: 1) conceptual work that unravels normative power regimes that perpetuate inequity and dispossession; 2) conceptual and methodological attention to ongoing everyday resistance to these regimes with outcomes that extend beyond academia; 3) an interdisciplinary approach emerging from intellectual curiosity, pedagogical experimentation, and collaborative knowledge production.

Teaching

Research

Research Interests:

My research program includes the following overlapping trajectories:

Il/legal geographies of property

My research primarily focuses on collective struggles over land and housing at the margins of proprietary regimes in the United States. I am interested in how these contestations highlight both the limits of liberal property law and practice, and the challenges of commoning under the threat of enclosure. My recent work examines how the use of “vacant” land and buildings in the city of Philadelphia reinforces and destabilizes normative notions of urban development and property, including through (il)legal taking of land to meet community needs (see Urban Geography 2021), speculative (counter) cartographies of urban vacancy (see Transactions 2022), legal counterclaims to urban commons (see Environment and Planning D 2022), and through the circulation of ‘fugitive dust’ (see Annals 2023).

I am currently taking this focus on legal geographies of property in new directions through both a research project on the management and disposal of ‘surplus’ U.S. federal property for ‘public benefit,’ and work on children’s trespassing (see Social & Legal Studies 2024).

Reimagining housing crises

In a second related area of research, I explore community responses to housing ‘crisis.’ This work includes research examining the development of limited equity housing cooperatives by manufactured housing (or ‘mobile home’) communities facing eviction, and the multiple and conflictual ways cooperative members understand and interact with the commons (what I call ‘differential commoning’) (see Antipode 2016). As a part of a feminist mapping collective – and in collaboration with two housing movements – I have also explored the relationship between houselessness and property vacancy, and related housing activism in the context of Covid-19, in 25 major U.S. cities (see Guerrilla Cartography (ed), Shelter: An Atlas 2023). I've also co-produced work on contemporary struggles for housing justice (see Radical Housing Journal 2022).

I am currently working on a collaborative research project on rental bidding in London.

Local geographies of land justice

In a third trajectory, I explore questions of justice and repair in relation to land use and access. In a project funded by the city of Madison, Wisconsin, I worked in collaboration with a local artist and community groups to produce a series of racial justice and decolonial public art maps related to historic and contemporary use of city space (for example, Human Geography 2020). Collaborating with a former colleague and students, I researched current efforts to preserve unregistered public rights of way in England and Wales. As part of this project, in collaboration and consultation with national and local land access groups, we are developing an open-source land justice curriculum and mapping university land ownership (see Antipode Intervention 2023).

I am currently working a project with students and a colleague at Vanderbilt University that attends to local efforts to repair and account for historical and ongoing land dispossession in the US, Canada and the UK. As part of this work, I have collaborated with Shared Assets and Seeding Reparations on a series of workshops in 2024 on local land reparations in the UK. In addition, I co-organised a workshop with scholars working on reparative geographies in 2025.

Paradoxical spaces of radical and feminist praxis

Finally, I consider the productive tensions within radical and intersectional feminist praxis, especially in relation to the organization of activist and educational spaces. Collaborative work emerging from this area of interest includes an article that reconceptualizes ‘safe space’ as paradoxical – involving the continual negotiation of porous binaries such as safe-unsafe (Antipode 2014), and an article on framing the academic department as a key site for anti-racist feminist intervention (Gender, Place & Culture 2021; Feminist Geography Unbound 2021). Considering what higher educational spaces (can) do – which informs and is informed by my teaching – I have also undertaken collaborative projects on the potential of experimental educational spaces on the ‘edge’ of the university (Anarchist Pedagogies 2012), the increasing role of financial speculation in higher education (ephemera 2017), redefining urban studies from the perspective of early career scholars (CITY 2022), and a decolonial analysis of the spatial and temporal assumptions in calls for ‘slow scholarship’ (ACME 2019).

I am also interested in exploring ways of thinking about the intersections of pedagogy, research and community collaborations. This has involved utilising design challenges and experimental mapping (GeoHumanities 2022), involving students in participatory action research on land access and ownership (see Antipode Intervention), and most recently (a) collaborative work on gender inclusive design in Tower Hamlets, and (b) developing an East London Atlas that profiles QM student research in East London.

Publications

Journal Articles

Noterman, E. and N. Blomley. 2024. “Children’s legal geographies, and the ‘make-believe’ of property.” Social & Legal Studies 33(2): 236-253.

Noterman, E. 2023. “Fugitive dust: the indeterminate trajectories of urban development’s present-past.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 113(4): 857-872.

Noterman, E. and C. Penney. 2023. "Accessing land justice: exploring the ethical obligations of academics and students at land-owning institutions." Antipode Interventions, November (online).

Baker A., Belotti E., Can A. and E. Noterman. 2022. “Housing Justice, mobilization, and financialization: A conversation from the Antipode Institute for Geographies of Justice.” Radical Housing Journal. https://radicalhousingjournal.org/2022/housing-justice-mobilization-and-financialization/

Noterman, E. 2022. “Adverse commoning: tracing the contested legal geographies of the urban commons.” Environment and Planning D: Society & Space. 40(1): 99-117.

Noterman, E. 2022. “Speculating on vacancy.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47(1): 123-138.

Urban ECA Collective, Noterman, E., et al. 2022. “Redefining the role of urban studies: Early Career Academics in the post-COVID-19 university.” CITY 26(4): 562-586.

Bley K., K. Caldwell, M. Kelly, J. Loyd, R.Roth, T. Anderson, A. Bonds, J. Plevin, D. Madison, E. Noterman, C. Spencer, T. Sims, C. Archuleta, Z. Ellner, T. McDowell, C. Nestel, et al. 2022. “A design challenge for transforming justice,” GeoHumanities 8(1): 344-365.

Noterman, E. 2021. “Taking back vacant property.” Urban Geography 42(8): 1079-1098.

Al-Saleh, D. and E. Noterman. 2021. “Organizing for collective feminist killjoy geographies in a US university.” Gender, Place and Culture 28(4): 453-474.

Meyerhoff E. and E. Noterman. 2019. “Revolutionary scholarship by any speed necessary: slow or fast but for the end of this world.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 18(1): 217-245.

Hanson L. and E. Noterman. 2017. “Speculating on the university: disruptive actions in today’s corporate university.” ephemera: theory & politics in organization 17(3): 185-202.

Noterman, E. 2016. “Beyond tragedy: differential commoning in a manufactured housing cooperative.” Antipode 48(2): 433-452.

Roestone Collective (Noterman E. and H. Rosenfeld). 2014. “Safe space: towards a reconceptualization.” Antipode 46(5): 1335-1359.

Book Chapters

Noterman E. and A. Pusey. 2012. “Inside, outside and on the edge of the academy: experiments in radical pedagogies.” In: R. Haworth (ed.) Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education, pp. 175-199. PM Press.

Other Publications

Noterman E. and Penney C. 2023. Accessing land justice: combining pedagogy and praxis to challenge university property regimes. Antipode Interventions, November. https://antipodeonline.org/2023/11/29/accessing-land-justice/

Noterman E., Penney C., Montague J., and S Hanna. Open the gates [SHORT FILM]. Cambridge Creative Encounters. https://youtu.be/p7D69hhRq-o

Noterman E., L. Leavitt, M. Kelly, A. Iverson, K. Caldwell, and K. Bley. 2023. “Could we house those experiencing houselessness? An analysis across 25 major U.S. cities during Covid-19 and beyond.” In: Guerrilla Cartography (ed.), Shelter: An Atlas.

Al-Saleh D. and E. Noterman. 2021. “Calling all collectives: interviews with feminist geography collectives.” In: M. Hawkins, B. Gokariksel, C. Neubert, and S. Smith (eds.) Feminist Geography Unbound: Discomfort, Bodies, and Prefigured Futures, 282-288. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.

Lally, N., Noterman, E. and K. Woodward. 2020. “Madison’s Race to Inequity.” Abolition Geographies Collective blog (online). https://abolitiongeographies.space/?p=359

Noterman, E. and A. Zanichkowsky. 2020. “Free the 350: decarceration map of Madison” (woodcut print map). Human Geography 2020 Art Contest. Human Geography 13(1), 99-105.

Book Reviews

Noterman, E. 2024. Review of 'The New Urban Ruins: Vacancy, Urban Politics and International Experiments in the Post-Crisis City' (2021), by C. O'Callaghan and C. Di Feliciantonio (eds). Space and Polity (online).

Noterman, E. 2019. Review of ‘Carving Out the Commons: Tenant Organizing and Housing Cooperatives in Washington, D.C.’ (2018), by A. Huron. Antipode, July 2019 (online).

Noterman, E. and H. Rosenfeld. 2018. Review of ‘Domestic Fortress: Fear and the New Home Front’ (2016), by R. Atkinson and S. Blandy. Urban Studies 55(2): 481-486.

Noterman, E. and H. Rosenfeld. 2015. Review of ‘Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence’ (2013), by C. Hanhardt. Urban Studies 52(10): 1934-1936

Supervision

I would welcome enquires from potential PhD students, including (but not limited to) those interested in the following:

· Legal geographies

· Property

· The commons/commoning

· Housing and land justice

· Decolonial and anti-racist geographies of land

· Urban social movements

· Feminist geographies

· Critical pedagogy

· Participatory and counter-mapping

· Participatory and activist research

Current PhD students:

Isadora Bellati, "The field of senses and the senses over the field: Rethinking Lawscapes for Constitutional land-disputes in Brazil," funded by LAHP Studentship

Former PhD students:

Jacob Stringer, "Renters unions against the neo-liberal city: can new renters’ organisations in Barcelona and London build mass movements?", funded by 1+3 ESRC LISS Studentship

Public Engagement

I have undertaken a number of collaborative community and public engagement projects over the years. Currently, I am working with colleagues Alastair Owens and Alison Blunt on a project with Jennie Savage and Tower Hamlets on gender inclusive design of green city spaces.

In recent years, I have:

• collaborated with Seeding Reparations and Shared Assets on a project around land reparations in the UK (2024)
• worked with the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (based in Philadelphia) to develop public resources on the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (2023)
• developed maps and analysis examining the relationship between houselessness and property vacancy across 25 major U.S. cities (Noterman et al., 2023);
• created a series of public maps on racial justice, sponsored by the City of Madison, Wisconsin (see for example, Noterman and Zanichkowsky 2020).
• developed a participatory research internship program in 2022 for students to work on questions of land justice in the city of Cambridge, that resulted in several public outputs (workshops, artistic interventions, film, open-source curriculum. This work was part of a broader research project, ‘Accessing Land Justice’ (see: https://www.oss.org.uk/access-and-land-justice/).