Faculty of Social Sciences
Department of Geography
Staff Profile
Olly Zanetti
o.v.zanetti@open.ac.uk
Research Student
Geography
Qualifications
MA, Geography, Queen Mary, University of London (2007)
MA (Hons), Geography, University of Glasgow (2006)
Professional affiliations
Royal Geographical Society Postgraduate Fellow
Member of OpenSpace Research Centre
Research Interests
My research is directed by an interest in attending to the importance of the nonhuman in the workings of practices which may be regarded as political. My attention to this area stems from my master's thesis, in which I considered the political implications of both urban gardening and the plants themselves on cityscapes through ethnographic work on guerrilla gardening in London. The thesis was awarded the Landscape Research Group's annual prize.
Though the subject of my doctoral research is very different, it draws on a similar intellectual framework led by thinkers such as Bruno Latour and John Law. I am in the midst of a PhD, affiliated with and funded by the OU and Exeter University's Biosecurity Borderlands research project, examining the practical workings of food genetic resources to consider their role in an age punctuated by debates around food security. To do this I am undertaking ethnographic work at seed banks, the facilities at which the somewhat abstract notion of 'food genetic resources' becomes remade as a set of practical activities. My intention is to examine the way seeds as material objects may work as political actors in broader assemblages which contribute to debates around UK food security.
Other Interests
I am keen to see the knowledge generated in the academy disseminated. As such I write the occasional freelance feature piece for publications such as New Internationalist, The Ecologist and surf, skate and snow magazine Huck, and have also had bylines in The Guardian. Amongst other things, I have written on the role of the law in environmental protection and on the politics of urbanism and public space as articulated through skateboarding.