Photo: Contact info Email: kayla.edgett@uga.edu Office: Geography-Geology Building 120 Research Interests: Carceral geography; racial capitalism; social movements; counterinsurgency; Atlanta Google Scholar CV: Curriculum Vitae_Edgett, Kayla_2026.pdf (272.84 KB) Kayla Edgett is a Ph.D. candidate in Geography at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on urban carceral geographies, racial capitalism, and organized resistance in the US South. She primarily engages qualitative methods to co-produce knowledge with and for those struggling against state and economic violence. Her work has been published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and the City, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, and Atlanta Studies. Her dissertation research utilizes an extended case study of Atlanta, GA, USA to investigate how carceral spaces have been developed and contested within the development of the city since the mid-20th century. Through interviews and counter archival research, the project further asks how community organizers are building abolition geography and abolitionist infrastructures within and against spaces of incarceration and policing in Atlanta in the first decades of the 21st century. Ultimately, the research asks how centering the production of carceral space and its contestations changes our understanding of urban governance and racial capitalism. In addition to her research, Kayla is an instructor of record for Introduction to World Geography (G1130), was co-chair of the Geography Graduate Student Association (2024 - 2025), and currently serves as an advisory board member of Atlanta Studies, a reviewer for Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Environment and Planning D, and Journal of Urban Affairs, and the Graduate Student Representative of the Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers. Beyond academia, she engages in public scholarship and community organizing for urban justice. Education Education: Ph.D. (expected May 2027), Geography, University of Georgia M.S. (2022), Geosciences, Georgia State University B.A. (2013), Sociology, Emory University Dissertation/Thesis Title: Prison Futures: The Production of Carceral Space and Abolition Geography in Atlanta. Grant Support Grants: Council Fellow, American Geographical Society, 2025 – 2026 Graduate Student Fellowship, Urban Geography Specialty Group, American Association of Geographers, 2025 Of Note Of note: Participant. Antipode’s 10th Institute for the Geographies of Justice (IGJ): “Organizing and Solidarity in a Polycrisis.” University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CA, 2026. Graduate Student Representative, Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group, 2025 - present Atlanta Studies Advisory Board Member, 2023 – present Geography Graduate Student Association Co-Chair, 2024 – 2025 Course Instruction Courses Regularly Taught: GEOG 1130 Research Selected Publications: JOURNAL ARTICLES Atlanta Abolition Research Collective (Edgett, K., Arney, R., Milligan, R. and Freshour, C.) (Forthcoming 2026). Policing Atlanta: Past, present, and future. ACME. Edgett, K. (2025). Toward autonomous abolition ecologies: Lessons from the Stop Cop City movement at the end of liberal democracy. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. 9(1), 293-311. Edgett, K. (2025). Black self-defense as social reproduction: Geographies of insurgency and counterinsurgency amidst racialized uneven development in Atlanta. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 115(5), 1088-1103. Edgett, K., Hankins, K. and Pierce, J. (2023). Whitenesses in the city: A history of making place in Little Five Points, Atlanta, USA, Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and the City. 4(2), 135-152. Edgett, K. and Abdelaziz, S. (2021). The Atlanta Way: Repression, mediation, and division of Black resistance from 1906 to the 2020 George Floyd Uprising. Atlanta Studies. October 20, 2021. https://doi.org/10.18737/atls20211020. BOOK CHAPTERS Edgett, K. (2025). Becoming External Enemies: From Occupy Atlanta to Stop Cop City. In No Cop City, No Cop World: Writings from the Stop Cop City Movement. Haymarket. Edgett, K. & Heynen, N. (2024). Cultivating Solidarity and Trust in the Field Through the “Spiral Model”: Engaging with Communities from a Radical Geographical Perspective. In How To Foster Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Justice in Geography, eds. Chen, G., & Eaves, L. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. BOOK REVIEWS Edgett, K. (forthcoming 2026). [Review of the book Class Warfare in Black Atlanta: Grassroots Struggles, Power, and Repression Under Gentrification, by Augustus Wood]. Southeastern Geographer. Edgett, K. (2025). [Review of the book Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana, by Lydia Pelot-Hobbs]. Southeastern Geographer.
