Biography

Simon is a cultural geographer with degrees in Geography from University College London (BA Hons) and the University of Nottingham (Ph.D). He came to Sussex in 1994 after working as a research associate at the University of Loughborough and Royal Holloway, University of London. At Sussex his research has focused upon the cultural geographies of post-war Britain and the United States, and his teaching is closely related to this research focus.

Role

Senior Lecturer in Human Geography

Simon is a Cultural Geographer specialising in the post-war cultural geographies of Britain and the United States. His research works around two principal and interrelated foci: the relationships between landscape, nature and identity, and the geographies of resistance. Empirically he focuses upon the cultural geographies of London and more recently this has entailed an interest in modern architecture and abstract art. He retains a secondary geographical focus on the western United States, particularly Southern California.

Simon's research within the field of landscape, nature and identity has focused upon forms of modernist planning interventions in specific landscapes and the ways in which these both highlight and become sensitised to established landscape values. This research has included work on large-scale reservoir schemes and more abstract, utopian planning philosophies. In a similar vein, he has worked on issues of modernity, nature and citizenship as expressed in the conduct and design of the 1930s Land Utilisation Survey of Britain, connecting these issues to later debates concerning the foundational philosophies and aesthetics of post-war reconstruction.

The second, related strand of Simon's research is on post-war resistance and works through the aesthetics and cultural politics of geographical imaginations and identity. This work builds upon his earlier research on literature and the modern city, and explores the representational and non-representational practices developed by the 1960s urban counterculture in Britain and the United States. Recently he has published on the diverse and territorialized geographies of music in 1960s Los Angeles, on the myth of Swinging London and on its progeny, counter-cultural, or underground London, and on the (non)representational practices of 1960s Op Art.

Simon's book Swinging City: A Cultural Geography of London, 1950-1974, which draws together a number of his research interests in a sustained analysis of the Swinging London phenomenon was published by Ashgate in 2011.

In 2012-2013 Simon will be teaching the following courses:

Second Year:
Cultural Geographies (Convenor)

Los Angeles and Las Vegas fieldcourse (Convenor)

Methods and Approaches in Human Geography (Convenor)

Final Year:
Landscape, Nature and Representation (Convenor)

Postgraduate Supervisions:

Current:

• Mary Beth Kitzel: Chasing Ancestors: Searching for roots of American Sign Language in Kent (with Brian Short)
• Roger Jenness: J.B. Priestley and Cultures of Landscape
• Jacken Waters: The City in Crisis: Hackney as a Terrain of Spatialised Conflict (with Dimitris Dalakoglou)

Recently completed:

• Maria Da Costa Cities in Motion: Towards an Understanding of the Cinematic City 2000 funded by the Brazilian Government
• Richard Hornsey: Male Same-Sex Desire and Everyday Life in Post-War London 2003. Funded by AHRB.
• Will Pilfold: Sir L. Dudley Stamp (1898-1966), Geographer and Public Servant: A Critical Biography 2005. Funded by the Frederick Soddy Trust.

Student Consultation

My Office Hours are Tuesdays 10.00-11.00 and Wednesdays 9.50-10.50. If you have a timetable clash on both of these slots please email me to arrange an appointment.

Rycroft, Simon (2013) Lightshows and the cultural politics of light: Mid-century cosmologies. The Sixties. ISSN 1754-1328

Rycroft, Simon (2012) Art and micro-cosmos: kinetic art and mid-20th century cosmology. Cultural Geographies, 19 (4). pp. 447-467. ISSN 1474-4740

Rycroft, Simon and Jenness, Roger (2012) J.B. Priestley: Bradford and a provincial narrative of England, 1913-1933. Social and Cultural Geography, 13 (8). pp. 957-976. ISSN 1464-9365

Rycroft, Simon (2011) Swinging city: a cultural geography of London 1950-1974. Re-materialising cultural geography . Ashgate. ISBN 9780754648307

Rycroft, Simon (2010) [Review] D Cosgrove (2008) Geography and vision: seeing, imagining and representing the world. Progress in Human Geography, 34 (2). pp. 270-271. ISSN 0309-1325

Rycroft, Simon (2009) Social and cultural geography, cultural politics. In: International encyclopaedia of human geography. Elsevier Science. ISBN 9780080449111

Rycroft, Simon (2007) Towards an historical geography of nonrepresentation: making the countercultural subject in the 1960s. Social and Cultural Geography, 8 (4). pp. 615-633. ISSN 1464-9365

Rycroft, Simon (2005) The nature of Op Art: Bridget Riley and the art of nonrepresentation. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23 (3). pp. 351-371. ISSN 0263-7758

Rycroft, Simon (2003) Mapping underground London: the cultural politics of nature, technology and humanity. Cultural Geographies, 10 (1). pp. 84-111. ISSN 0967-4608

Rycroft, Simon (2002) The geographies of Swinging London. Journal of Historical Geography, 28 (4). pp. 566-588. ISSN 0305-7488

Rycroft, Simon (1998) Global undergrounds: the cultural politics of sound and light in Los Angeles 1965-75. In: The place of music. Mappings: society, theory, space . Guilford Press, pp. 222-248. ISBN 9781572303140

Rycroft, Simon (1996) Access and alignment: a passport to Rutlandshire. In: Rights of way: culture, policy, management. Rural studies . Continuum International Publishing, pp. 129-141. ISBN 9781855673908

Cosgrove, Denis, Roscoe, Barbara and Rycroft, Simon (1996) Landscape and Identity at Ladybower Reservoir and Rutland Water. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 21 (3). pp. 534-551. ISSN 0029-2754

Rycroft, Simon and Cosgrove, Denis (1995) Mapping the Modern Nation: Dudley Stamp and the Land Utilisation Survey of Britain. History Workshop Journal, 40 (1). pp. 91-105. ISSN 0309-2984

Daniels, Stephen and Rycroft, Simon (1993) Mapping the Modern City: Alan Sillitoe's Nottingham Novels. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 18 (4). pp. 460-480. ISSN 0020-2754