Prof Nissa Finney

Prof Nissa Finney

Professor of Human Geography

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 3944
Email
Nissa.Finney@st-andrews.ac.uk

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Biography

I joined the University of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø in 2015 having previously worked at the University of Manchester (2006-2015) where I was Lecturer, Hallsworth Fellow, ESRC Fellow and member of the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research. Prior to that I worked in the Department of Geography at the University of Liverpool and at the University of Sheffield. I obtained my PhD in Geography (2004) from the University of Wales Swansea.

Within the School of Geography and Sustainable Development at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø I have held the roles of Director of Research, Director of Postgraduate Studies andConvenor of the Population and Health Research Group, and have been a member of several School committees.

I am a founding member of the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), and a member of the ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC). I have previously been Chair of the RGS-IBG Population Geography Research Group, and a Visiting Scholar at TU Delft and the University of Washington. I have served in advisory roles (such as for the Office for National Statistics and Interface Demography at VU Brussels); have held editorial board roles (Urban Studies, Population, Space and Place); undertaking a number of PhD external examinations in the UK and elsewhere; and served on funding review and assessment panels. I am currently a member of the Office for National Statistics Ethnic Group Assurance Panel and the UK Household Longitudinal Study Strategic Advisory Board.

Teaching

I teach across the Geography programme at sub-honours, honours and postgraduate levels on migration, ethnicity, integration, inequalities, neighbourhood, population change, research methods, and mixed methods, including:

  • GG4250 Diversity, Inequality and Place (Convenor)
  • GG1001 Geographies of Global Change (Inequalities/Population block)
  • GG1002 A World in Crisis? (Convenor)
  • GG1001/2 and GG2011/12 tutorials
  • Honours Dissertation supervision

Research areas

My current research examines ideas of community and equality; and social science methods for exploring these. My research interests focus on the following themes, often with cross-over between them:

Meanings of the local: Changing neighbourhoods, community and spatial inequalities

My current work on this theme is within the – Connecting Generations (CPC-CG) project that I lead around ‘. We are exploring intergenerational community using census and survey analyses with qualitative fieldwork in Dundee, Scotland. This builds on recent CPC work examining and . Ìý

I am also examining changing neighbourhoods in terms of ethnic diversity within the Project (GEDI). Our recent papers, using census data, trace and .

This ongoing work builds on my past research funded by ESRC and the Leverhulme Trust including on , , and the in local population change. My PhD and early postdoctoral work examined local belonging and community for asylum seekers and refugees in terms of and the importance of . ÌýMy 2009 book ‘? Challenging myths about race and migration’ (with Ludi Simpson) engages themes of ethnic segregation and the politics of local population change.

Finding home: Residential decision making, local belonging and housing inequalities

This theme is concerned with how and why people, more and less, get to live in favourable residential circumstances. I am examining this using mixed methods within the – Connecting Generations (CPC-CG) ‘ project and within the Project. We are using qualitative data on residential decision making and experience together with detailed small-area UK census data to examine internal migration patterns in terms of age, ethnicity and class.

My recent papers on this theme include interrogation of in the UK and examination of in Belgium.

This current work extends my previous scholarship in the edited collections ‘’ (with Darren Smith, Keith Halfacree and Nigel Walford) and ‘’ (with Gemma Catney); and in a number of papers on and including through a .

Ethnic inequalities and racism

I am currently examining ethnic inequalities in housing in the UK using Census 2021/22 data as part of the GEDI project and using the to understand experiences of .

I have published a number of papers and book chapters on and ‘slippery’ as well as recent reports for BEMIS on ethnic inequalities and and, for the Centre for Homelessness Impact, on in Britain.

Since 2020 I have led the (Evidence for Equality National Survey) within the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity to document the lives of ethnic and religious minorities in Britain through a new national survey and to provide novel, robust data for equalities research and practice. The (2023), available free-to-download from Policy Press, documents ‘Racism and ethnic inequalities in a time of crisis’.

Inclusive and Mixed Methods in Social Science

I am fascinated by the philosophy and practice of integrating evidence across epistemological and scalar boundaries. In the current project on ‘ (within the ) we are actively exploring the mixing of methods (coming soon!). You can read some of my thoughts on the and the ; and an example of mixed methods is a recent paper on . Ìý

Through the , we are implementing and testing novel non-probability survey methods, at a national scale, to generate social data that better include and represent minoritised populations. The , and a Teaching Dataset, are freely available from the UK Data Service. ÌýI am leading an ongoing, ESRC-Funded project on ‘Inclusive Survey Methods’ that will report in early 2026.

From the EVENS project we have recently published recommendations on .

In addition to these four themes of substantive focus in my current research, I have an ongoing interest in the history and future of Population Geography which you can read about in terms of , the and a virtual special issue within RGS-IBG journals.

PhD supervision

  • GauthierÌýDulout

Selected publications

  • Open access
    Šťastná, M., Mikolai, J., Finney, N. & Keenan, K. L., 19 Jan 2026, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Longitudinal and Life Course Studies. Early View, 27 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Wilkie, R. Z., Finney, N., Butler-Warke, A., He, Q., Graham, E. & Hale, J. M., 1 Mar 2026, In: Population, Space and Place. 32, 2, 14 p., e70217.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Joshi, M., Finney, N. & Hale, J. M., 20 May 2025, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Latest Articles, 26 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Haycox, H., Meer, N., Finney, N., Rhodes, J., Hill, E. & Leahy, S., 1 Feb 2025, In: Sociology. 59, 1, p. 161-179 19 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Packwood, H. & Finney, N., 3 Dec 2025, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Latest Articles, 19 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Stastna, M., Mikolai, J., Finney, N. & Keenan, K. L., 2 Mar 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Journal of Family Issues. OnlineFirst, 29 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Haycox, H., Hill, E., Finney, N., Meer, N., Rhodes, J. & Leahy, S., 5 Jun 2024, In: Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 50, 18, p. 4545-4562 18 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Joshi, M., Finney, N. & Hale, J. M., 4 Jun 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Ageing & Society. FirstView, 31 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Finney, N., Botterill, K., Cranston, S., Darlington-Pollock, F., McCollum, D. & Shubin, S., 6 May 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Population, Space and Place. Early View, 11 p., e2767.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Bécares, L., Taylor, H., Nazroo, J., Kapadia, D., Finney, N., Begum, N. & Shlomo, N., 11 Jul 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Ethnic and Racial Studies. Latest Articles, 22 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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