Non‐linear pathways of/for social and spatial justice research

‘Research, engagement, activism’ appears to indicate a linear path in action-oriented geographical scholarship. It imagines a researcher, bringing their scholarly question/interest to a process of engagement with an issue or place, which then contributes to existing or new activism. In practice, this linear narrative is often disrupted and complicated by what counts as research, outside and within formal education and research institutions, as well as by non-linear personal and collective trajectories. Research, engagement and activism can co-exist, overlap, vie for attention, cut across us, pulling in many directions, undoing the grounds on which we stand, our certainties, and forms of subjectivation, through specific and at times incompatible geographies and rhythms. Reflecting on my non-linear trajectory as a human geographer and as activist in the UK and Spain, in this commentary I tease out some tactics, possibilities and constraints of radical engagement in/with the ‘field’. Drawing on a feminist politics of/for social and spatial justice, I discuss ethics and positionality, radical openness in research, working collectively (within) and collaboratively (across), the difficulties and privileges of engaging with place-based research and action, the possibility of radical research beyond the academy, and the importance of valuing and supporting radical research praxis through, among other practices, the editorial work of the Radical Housing Journal.