Nancy Worth

Dr. Nancy Worth is a feminist economic geographer who is interested in work, social reproduction, inequalities, age and generations, and feminist theory. Theoretically, her interests lie in relationality and temporality, focusing on futurity, intergenerationality and precarity. Nancy is also concerned with research practice, including ethics, participation and innovative qualitative methods.

I welcome graduate student applicants interested in the following areas—please email me to discuss your plans.

General areas: Economic Geography; Social Geography; Feminist Geography; Social Justice; Identities and Belonging

Specific topics: precarious and non-standard work, housing vulnerability, housing coping strategies (co-residence, co-ops, flat sharing, AirBnB and the gig economy), generations and the lifecourse, care and unpaid work, GenY, home and well-being, geographies of intimate life, lived experiences of austerity, feminist theory (including relational autonomy, theorizations of interdependence, futurities), identities and the economic (gender, class, race, sexuality, disability, etc) and the geographies of children and youth.

Using feminist theory and qualitative methods, her scholarship engages with relationality, precarity and futurity to understand how workers negotiate a changing labour market. Her research spans school-to-work transitions with disabled young people, gendered precarious employment, invisible labour in knowledge work, and work-from-home freelancing in Toronto's media sector. Her current SSHRC-funded project investigates study-work-housing dynamics among international graduate students and their families.

• PhD, University of Leeds

• MA, University of Toronto

• GEMCC 600 - Fundamentals of Climate Change
  • Taught in 2025
• GEOG 101 - Human Geographies: People, Space and Change
  • Taught in 2024
• GEOG 202 - Geography of the Global Economy
  • Taught in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
• GEOG 225 - Global Environment and Health
  • Taught in 2021
• GEOG 302 - Geographies of Work and Employment
  • Taught in 2021, 2022, 2025
• GEOG 336 - Space, Power, and Politics: Citizenship in a Changing World
  • Taught in 2022, 2024
• GEOG 436 - Feminist Economic Geography: Gender, Identities and Social Change
  • Taught in 2021, 2022

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Journal Articles:Colls, R., Fluri, J., Boonabaana, B. Coddington, K., Datta, A., Faria, C. KlosterKamp, S., Meletis, Z., Trauger, A., Williams, J. and Worth, N. (2025) Pushing Boundaries: Reflections on the 2022 International FEMGEOG Conference. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.zr3mcv-2444

• Karaagac, E. A., & Worth, N. (2025). “Making space for work: understanding freelancers’ hybrid work identities through work from home practices” Social & Cultural Geography, 1–21. https://doi-org/10.1080/14649365.2025.2503239 (authorship shared equally)

• Seitz, D.K., Cockayne, C., Good, R.Z., Hannum, K.L., Kroepsch, A.C., Rhodes II, M.A., Swab, J., Worth, N. (2023) Navigating STEMification for critical geography educators: finding leverage in classroom and institutional pedagogies, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/03098265.2023.2261863 (authorship shared equally)

• Worth, N. and E.A. Karaagac (2021). Accounting for absences and ambiguities in the freelancing labour relation Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 113:1, pp. 96-108. (authorship shared equally)

• Worth, N. (2021) “Going back to get ahead? Privilege and generational housing wealth” Geoforum 120, pp.30-37.

• Reid-Musson, E; Cockayne, D; Frederiksen, L. & Worth, N. (2020) “Feminist economic geography and the future of work” Environment and Planning A 52:7 pp. 1457-1468. (25%, authorship shared equally.)

• Worth, N. & Karaagac, A. (2020) ‘The temporalities of free knowledge work: Making time for media engagement’ Time & Society 29 (4), 1024-1039. (66% contribution, including writing and project design)

• Worth, N. (2020) ‘Public geographies and the gendered experience of saying ‘yes’ to the media’ The Professional Geographer Volume 72:4 pp. 547-555.

• Tomaszczyk, A. & Worth, N. (2018) ‘Boomeranging home: understanding why millennials live with parents in Toronto, Canada’ Social & Cultural Geography 21:8, 1103-1121. (66% contribution, developed project, co-wrote chapter and developed drafts)

• Worth, N. (2018) ‘Mothers, daughters and learning to labour: Framing work through gender and generation’ The Canadian Geographer 62:4 pp. 551-56.

• Worth, N. (2018) ‘Making sense of precarity: talking about economic insecurity with millennials in Canada ’Journal of Cultural Economy 12:5 pp. 441-447.

• Worth, N. (2016) ‘Who we are at work: millennial women, everyday inequalities and insecure work Gender Place & Culture 23:9 pp. 1302-1314

• Worth, N. (2016) ‘Feeling precarious: millennial women and work’ Environment & Planning D: Society and Space 34:4 pp. 601-616

• Worth, N. (2014) ‘Student-focused assessment criteria: thinking through best practice’ Journal of Geography in Higher Education 38:3 pp. 361-372

• Worth, N. (2013) ‘Experimenting with student-led seminars’ PLANET (Journal of the Higher Education Academy) journals.heacademy.ac.uk/doi/abs/10.11120/plan.2013.00003

• Worth, N. (2013) ‘Visual impairment in the city: young people’s social strategies for independent mobility’ Urban Studies 50:3 pp. 455-466

• Worth, N. (2012) ‘Making friends and fitting in: a social-relational understanding of disability at school’ Social & Cultural Geography 14: 1 pp. 103-123

• Worth, N. (2011) ‘Evaluating lifemaps as a versatile method for lifecourse geographies’ Area 43: 4 pp. 405-412

• Worth, N. (2009) ‘Understanding youth transition as becoming: identity, time and futurity’ Geoforum 40:6 pp. 1050-1060

• Worth, N. (2009) ‘Making use of audio diaries in research with young people: examining narrative, participation and audience’ Sociological Research Online 14:4

• Worth, N. (2008) ‘The significance of the personal within disability geography’ Area 40:3 pp. 306-314 (Short listed for the Area Prize for New Research in Geography 2008)