My research interests focus on the social and cultural geographies of migration, in particular relating to identification, belonging, intimacy, and home. 

I am currently developing a new empirical research project to collect life-stories from older people in Britain, focusing on narratives of home, belonging, and British migration over the life-course. This project pays particular attention to domesticity and intimacy, exploring the way in which older people's current sense of belonging is shaped by their experiences of diaspora. Drawing on this research, with Lena Nare, University of Helsinki, I am editing a volume on Transnational Migration and Home in Older Age (Forthcoming, Routledge).

My postgraduate research explored British migrant identities in Dubai (ESRC funded, 2001-2005). In this research, I examined the negotiation of belonging through cultural practices of domesticity, intimacy, and national identity. In a postdoctoral project (RGS Small Research Grant 2006), I extended my focus to the wider GCC region, more specifically Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Abu Dhabi. Related to this work, with Anne-Meike Fechter, University of Sussex, I have recently edited The New Expatriates: Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals, see http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415503662 

Within the undergraduate Geography curriculum, I convene and teach the Level-3 option 'Transnationalism and Identity' and convene the Geography Undergraduate Thesis, supervising Human Geography students on themes relating to socio-cultural and feminist geographies.    

DPhil Supervision: 

I currently co-supervise the following DPhil students and projects: 

Debbie Humphry (ESRC-funded): Belonging and integration: a visual and participative analysis'.

Elisa Pascucci (ESRC-funded): Landscapes of exile: contested urban spaces and embodied politics of belonging among Iraqi refugees in London and Cairo

Habon Abdulle: Somali women and political participation: a case study of diasporas in Minneapolis and London.

Katie Wright-Higgins (ESRC-funded): British Migrants’ Embodied Experience of Migration in Aotearoa New Zealand 

Amy Clarke (ESRC-funded): When ‘they’ become ‘us’: Exploring understandings of integration and belonging among white middle-class British adults

DPhil students recently completed:

Maria Abranches (FCT-funded): The route of the land's roots: connecting life-worlds between Guinea-Bissau and Portugal through food-related meanings and practices.

Gunjan Sondhi: Gendering International Student Mobility: An Indian Case Study

Barbara Johnston: 'Becoming Ma'am? Expatriate women's relationships with domestic workers in Singapore'.

Donna Simpson (2011, ESRC-funded): 'Salads, Sweat and Status: Migrant Workers in UK horticulture'.

Lena Nare (2009): 'Making Homes and Keeping Households - The Moral Economies of Migrant Domestic Work in Naples'.

Student Consultation

Walsh, Katie (2012) [Review] Robert Bickers ed. (2010) Settlers and expatriates. Oxford history of the British Empire companion series. Journal of Historical Geography, 38 (3). pp. 350-351. ISSN 0305-7488

Fechter, Anne-Meike and Walsh, Katie, eds. (2012) The new expatriates: postcolonial approaches to mobile professionals. Routledge, London; New York. ISBN 978-0415503662

Walsh, Katie (2011) Migrant masculinities and domestic space: British home-making practices in Dubai. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36 (4). pp. 516-529. ISSN 0020-2754

Walsh, Katie (2011) Emotion and migration: British transnationals in Dubai. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30 (1). pp. 43-59. ISSN 0263-7758

Walsh, Katie and Fox, R (2011) Furry belongings: pets, migration and belonging. In: Animal movements, moving animals: essays on direction, velocity and agency in humanimal encounters. Centre for Gender Research Uppsala, Sweden. ISBN 978-91-978186-7-4

Coles, Anne and Walsh, Katie (2010) From 'Trucial State' to 'postcolonial' city? The imaginative geographies of British expatriates in Dubai. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36 (8). pp. 1317-1333. ISSN 1369-183X

Walsh, Katie (2010) Negotiating migrant status in the emerging global city: Britons in Dubai. Encounters . pp. 235-255. ISSN 2075-048X

Fechter, Anne-Meike and Walsh, Katie (2010) Introduction to Special Issue: "Examining 'expatriate' continuities: postcolonial approaches to mobile professionals". Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36 (8). pp. 1197-1210. ISSN 1369-183X

Walsh, Katie (2009) Geographies of the heart in transnational spaces: love and the intimate lives of British migrants in Dubai. Mobilities, 4 (3). pp. 427-445. ISSN 1745-0101

Walsh, Katie (2009) Methods: participant observation. In: International encyclopedia of human geography. Elsevier, pp. 77-81. ISBN 9780080449104

Walsh, Katie, Shen, Hsiu-hua and Willis, Katie (2008) Introduction to Special Issue: Heterosexuality and Migration in Asia. Gender, Place and Culture, 15 (6). pp. 575-579. ISSN 0966-369X

Walsh, Katie (2007) Travelling together? Work, intimacy and home amongst British expatriate couples in Dubai. In: Gender and Family among Transnational Professionals. Routledge international studies of women & place . Routledge, pp. 63-84. ISBN 9780415396004

Walsh, Katie (2007) 'It got very debauched, very Dubai!' Heterosexual intimacy amongst single British expatriates. Social and Cultural Geography, 8 (4). pp. 507-33. ISSN 1470-1197

Walsh, Katie (2006) 'Dad says I'm tied to a shooting star!' Grounding (research on) British expatriate belonging. Area, 38 (3). pp. 268-278. ISSN 0004-0894

Walsh, Katie (2006) British expatriate belongings: mobile homes and transnational homing. Home Cultures, 3 (2). pp. 123-44. ISSN 1740-6315