Eric Olund

Dr. Eric Olund is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the School of Geography and Planning, University of Sheffield, where he joined the Department of Geography in September 2006 after completing his PhD at the University of British Columbia. His academic journey began with a BA in Political Science and MA in liberal studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Dr. Olund's research focuses on the cultural and legal production and regulation of race, gender and sexuality, the sensory culture and geography of governmentality, and urban life in the Progressive-era United States. His work critically examines how social reformers historically attempted to regulate race at the intersection of cultural practice and public policy, particularly examining projects that produced and regulated whiteness in connection with heterosexuality. He engages deeply with critical theory, drawing on thinkers like Benjamin, Bergson, Butler, Connolly, Deleuze, Dewey, Foucault, and James.

His publication record shows a consistent trajectory toward examining the racialized regulatory geographies that have historical roots but continue to manifest in contemporary contexts, particularly in relation to the War on Terror. His most recent work spans topics including spatio-temporalities of race during World War I, historical geographies of sexualities, regulatory aesthetics in cinema, and the governance of intimacy.

• Multiple racial futures: Spatio-temporalities of race during World War I (2017)
• Afterword: When Has Sexuality Ever Been About Sex? (2015)
• The governance of the conditional (2013)
• Cinema's milieux: governing the picture show in the United States during the Progressive era (2012)
• Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy (2011)

Dr. Olund currently supervises PhD students interested in research at the intersections of social difference, visual culture, power, and the political. His teaching spans undergraduate and postgraduate levels, with particular emphasis on cultural geography, social theory, and the politics of geographical knowledge production. He convenes the Masters in Social and Cultural Geographies course and teaches across multiple modules that explore how our image-saturated culture influences our experience of the world, ourselves, and others.