A key facet of my work has been centred around the extraction, movement and transformation of sand. I began this work in 2017, as part of my PhD, where I spent a year tracing movements of sand in and around Accra in Ghana. Since then, I have continued to work with this material as an entry point into urban life and landscape in London, UK and more recently, Freetown, Sierra Leone. This work has been multifaceted, including creative engagements with sand and I have and continue to collaborate with other researchers and policy makers who are working with and responding to challenges and affordances connected to this grainy substance.

Funding/projects

UCL QR Policy Support Fund (2024) ‘Sand and Sustainability: Just Transitions and Participatory Policy in Sierra Leone’ with Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre.

Swedish Research Links (2021-present) University of Gothenburg. Project Leader: Jan Bachman. Details here.

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (2020-2021) Postdoctoral work on sand and extraction

ESRC PhD (2016-2020) Thesis title ‘Shifting Sands in Accra Ghana: The ante-lives of urban form’

Peer-reviewed publications

Dawson, K. (2023) ‘A share in the sands: trips, pits and potholes in Accra, Ghana’ Africa 93(1).

Asare, K.Y., Dawson, K. And Hemmler, K.S. (2023) ‘A sand-security nexus: Insights from peri-urban Accra, Ghana’ The Extractive Industries and Society 15. Read here.

Dawson, K. (2021) ‘Geologising Urban Political Ecology: The ante-lives of urban form in Accra, Ghana’ Antipode 53(4): 995-1017. Read here.

Wider publications

UNEP (2022) ‘Sand and Sustainability: 10 Strategic Recommendations to Avert a Crisis’

Dawson, K. (2021) ‘Sedimentary Justice: A planetary politics of shifting sediment’ Antipode Interventions

Dawson, K. (2021) ‘As If Sand Were Stone Review’ [Society and Space Magazine]

Dawson, K. (2021) ‘Intimate engagements with a global material’ Photography & narrative [Earth Issue]

Dawson, K. (2020) ‘Urbanisation in Accra and cities of sand’ [Africa@LSE]

Conferences/presentations/talks

Dawson, K. (2023) ‘A share in the sands’ Fall Debates at KU Leuven

Dawson, K. (2023) ‘Making sediment move: Circulating sediment and London’s urban ante-lives’ [University of Nottingham Geography Seminar Series]

Dawson, K. (2023) Panel contributor to ‘Assembling the Coast’ [Material Legacies Design Lab #13 Roundtable Politics and Poetics of Sand]

Dawson, K. (2022) ‘Sandy sensibilities: ethnographic drift and aesthetic moulding in and for a ‘City a Sand’’ Sand ethnographies Workshop: University of Ghent

Dawson, K. (2022) ‘The ante lives of urban form: shifting sands in Accra, Ghana’ [Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa, LSE]

Dawson, K. (2021) ‘Sand-city-security’ [ENACT: Institute for Security Studies, INTERPOL]

Dawson, K. (2021) ‘Sedimentary justice – Equity, Ecosystems and Scarcity’ The Global Sand Crisis and Infrastructure [IUCN: World Conservation Congress]

Dawson, K. (2021) Webinar Moderator of “The Global Sand Series” [World Wildlife Fund, Institute for Sustainability and Energy]

Dawson, K. (2021) ‘Anxious Edges: sand, security and sustainability at Accra’s urban limits’ [RGS-IBG Annual International Conference: Global urban Frontiers panel.

Dawson, K. (2019) ‘The shifting sandpit in Accra’s peripheries’ [RGS-IBG Annual International Conference: Peri-urban transformations in the Global South panel]

Dawson, K. (2018) ‘Shifting sands in Accra, Ghana: The sandy ante-lives of urban form’ [RGS-IBG Annual International Conference: Sandscapes panel]

Public engagement, exhibitions and interventions

‘Sand and Sustainability: Stakeholder Workshop’ with Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC) (2023) Freetown City Council. Swedish Links Research Funding

City of Sand Documentary: Screenings @ University of Ghent, London School of Economics.

Cities of Sand Podcast Series (2022) [LSE Geography]

Shifting Sands: Anxious Landscapes in Urban Worlds (2019) [LSE’s Knowledge Exchange Funding] Multimedia installation of photographic works from doctoral research in Accra, Ghana.