Patricia Ehrkamp (she/her) | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Patricia Ehrkamp (she/her)

Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor

Professor of Geography

President, American Association of Geographers (AAG)

Contact Information

p.ehrkamp@uky.edu

863 Patterson Office Tower

(859) 257-6952

Research Interests

international migration
geopolitics
borders
refugees
urban geography
transnationalism
feminist geographies
United States
political geography
Europe

Affiliations

Geography
Social Theory
Gender and Women's Studies
Applied Environmental and Sustainability Studies
New Maps Plus
Political Geography (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/political-geography)
American Association of Geographers (AAG)

Political Geography
ResearchGate
American Association of Geographers (AAG)

Availability

Office hours fall 2025: Tuesdays 1-2pm and by appointment

Research

My research interests lie in immigration, borders, refugee geopolitics, citizenship, and migrant transnationalism. This work straddles political, feminist, cultural, and urban geographies. My recent NSF-funded research project on the geopolitics of trauma examined the role of mental health and its governance in the admission and resettlement of Iraqi refugees in the US. A previous externally funded project analyzed how communities of faith in the U.S. South are engaged in the complex, racialized, and changing geographies of immigration and belonging. As a political and feminist geographer I am particularly interested the role of spaces of everyday life in these processes. My work has been published, among others, in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Urban Geography, Progress in Human Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Space & Polity, Environment and Planning A, and Annals of the American Association of Geographers. I currently serve as Associate Editor of Political Geography and hold the office of Vice-President/President-Elect of the American Association of Geographers.

My graduate advisees work on related topics. Recently completed PhD dissertations include Syrian refugees' accounts of life in Denmark; migration and masculinity in Shanghai's construction industry; recent MA theses have examined gentrification and the Black church; memorial landscapes; everyday experiences of belonging; veterans' representations of wartime experiences.

Teaching

I teach courses at the undergraduate level on Immigrant America (GEO 221), A World of Migrants (HON 251), and qualitative research methods (GEO 311).

At the graduate level I offer seminars in Political Geography (GEO 714: Immigration and Democracy; GEO 714 Immigration Geopolitics; GEO 714: Borders and Displacement; GEO 714 Feminist Political Geographies), Social Geography (GEO 722 Geography & Coloniality; GEO 722 Migrants & Strangers) as well as courses on research design and qualitative methods (GEO 600 Geographic Research; GEO 705 Qualitative Research Methods). My teaching also includes professional development courses such as GEO 655 Publications Workshop, and GEO 743 Proposal Development/Grant Writing.

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

Johnson, L., M.H. Jacobsen, P. Ehrkamp, 2024, The work of fluid metaphors in migration research: Geographical imaginations and the politics of writing, Progress in Human Geography.

Loyd, J.M., A.J. Secor, P. Ehrkamp, 2023, Geopolitics of disability and the ablenationalism of refuge, Geopolitics.

Ehrkamp, Patricia, Mia M. Bennett, Charis Enns, Kevin Grove, Filippo Menga, Antonis Vradis, and Olivier J. Walther, 2023, Small steps (January Editorial), Political Geography 102821, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102821

Secor, A.J., P. Ehrkamp and J.M. Loyd, 2022, The problem of the future in the spacetime of resettlement: Iraqi refugees in the US, Environment and Planning D: Society & Space.

Ehrkamp, P., Loyd, J., and A. Secor, 2021, Trauma as displacement: Observations from refugee resettlement, Annals of the American Association of Geographers (special issue on Displacement).

Ehrkamp, P., 2020, Progress Report: Geographies of Migration III: Transit and Transnationalism, Progress in Human Geography, https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132519895317

Ehrkamp, P., Loyd, J. and A. Secor, 2019, Embodied experiences of trauma geopolitics, in Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration, Katharyne Mitchell, Reece Jones, and Jennifer Fluri (eds.), London: Edward Elgar, pp. 117-129.

Loyd, J., Ehrkamp, P. and A. Secor, 2018, A geopolitics of trauma: Refugee administration and protracted uncertainty in Turkey, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, https://doi.org/10.111/tran.12234

Ehrkamp, P., 2017, Progress Report: Geographies of Migration II: The racial-spatial politics of immigration, Progress in Human Geography, https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132517747317

Ehrkamp, P., 2017, Nativism, nationalism, and the hardening lines of citizenship, Society & Space Open Site

Ehrkamp, P. and C. Nagel, 2017, Policing the borders of church and societal membership: Immigrant and faith-based communities in the U.S. South, special issue on Polymorphous Borders, Territory, Politics, Government 5(3): 318-331

Nagel, C. and P. Ehrkamp, 2017, Immigration, Christian faith communities, and the practice of multiculturalism in the US South, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(1): 190-208, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2016.1229489

Ehrkamp, P., 2016, Progress Report: Geographies of Migration I: Refugees, Progress in Human Geography DOI: 10.1177/0309132516663061

Nagel, C. and P. Ehrkamp, 2016, Deserving welcome? Immigrants and the contentious politics of belonging in the churches of the U.S. South, Antipode 48(4): 1040-158, DOI: 10.1111/anti.12233

Ehrkamp, P. and M. Jacobsen, 2015, Citizenship, Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Geography, (eds. Anna Secor, Joanne Sharpe, John Agnew, Virginie Mamadouh), pp. 152-164

Ehrkamp, P. and C. Nagel, 2014, 'Under the radar’: Undocumented immigrants, Christian faith communities, and the precarious spaces of welcome in the U.S. South, Special Issue on Migration, Annals of the Association of American Geographers104(2): 319-328, DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2013.858573

Ehrkamp, P., 2013, ’I’ve had it with them!’ Younger migrant women’s spatial practices of conformity and resistance, Gender, Place and Culture 20(1): 19-36

Ehrkamp, P. and C. Nagel, 2012, Immigration, places of worship and the politics of citizenship in the US South, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37(4): 624-638

Staeheli, L., P. Ehrkamp, H. Leitner, and C. Nagel, 2012, Dreaming the ordinary: Daily life and the complex geographies of citizenship, Progress in Human Geography 36 (5): 627-643

Ehrkamp, P., 2010, The limits of multi-cultural tolerance? Liberal democracy and media portrayals of Muslim migrant women in Germany, Space and Polity 14 (1), 13–32

Ehrkamp, P., 2008, Risking publicity: masculinities and the racialization of public neighborhood space, Social and Cultural Geography 9 (2), 117-133

Ehrkamp, P., 2006,’We Turks are no Germans’: Assimilation discourses and the dialectical construction of identities in Germany, Environment and Planning A, 38 (9): 1673-1692

Ehrkamp, P., 2005, Placing identities. Transnational practices and local attachments of Turkish immigrants in Germany, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31 (2), 345-364