Rachel Goffe

I am a geographer and a licensed architect. My work is concerned with place-making, livelihood and how these aspects of life are shaped through, and in tension with, public policy. My research is primarily sited in Jamaica where I am from originally and has focused on the encounter between recent policy to curtail squatting and Caribbean radical traditions that emerged through durable yet insecure tenure to small plots of land. My current research investigates the exclusion of Jamaicans from their coastlines amidst the rapidly expanding tourism industry. The project seeks to document the social, spiritual, ecological and healing relationship with the Sea as the basis for reenvisioning the Caribbean as a continuous terraqueous zone. While my work is sited in Jamaica, it aims to intervene in theories regarding incomplete enclosure and racial capitalism, social reproduction, and abolition geographies.

Publications

Goffe, R. (in press). “What Lies Here, beyond Boundary?” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. 73(3).

Goffe, R. and N. Luke. (2024). “What does capital consume? Racial capitalism and the social reproduction of surplus people.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. OnlineFirst.

Goffe, R. (2024) “Capture Land as Abolition Geography: The Mutuality of Placemaking and Flight.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 42(1): 17–35.

Goffe, R. (2023) “Capture Land: Anti-Squatting Policy as Processual Land Grab in Jamaica.” In Routledge Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing. Andreas Neef, Chanrith Ngin, Tsegaye Moreda, and Sharlene Mollett, editors. Routledge.

Goffe, R. (2023) “Reproducing the Plot: Making Life in the Shadow of Premature Death.” Special Issue, Outside the Wage. Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography. 55(4): 985-1295.

Courses

CITD05 City Studies Workshop I

Awards

Connaught Major Research Challenge for Black Researchers Award (2024-25)

Engaged Scholarship Grant (2025)

Glenda Laws Award, American Association of Geographers (2026)