Madeline Routon

Born in Los Angeles/USA.

Madeline (Maddy) Routon is a writer, cultural geographer, and artist currently based in London.

Her academic work as a feminist cultural geographer focuses on creative practices of placemaking under conditions of urban precarity and austerity, particularly those led by women. Her article Mothers, wives, friends: women’s role in London’s squatting struggles (published in Gender, Place & Culture) draws on archival materials to highlight underrepresented histories of women’s squatting movements in late 20th-century London. Her (auto)ethnographic research on radical archives and the archivists who care for them will appear in the forthcoming edited volume Shaking the Archive: Reconsidering the Role of Archives in Contemporary Society  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026).

Her current PhD project expands on these themes through oral history interviews with people who squatted in London from 1969 to the present. The research will culminate in a co-curated archive of ephemera and materials from these intersecting histories, to be exhibited both online and in person, and permanently housed at Bishopsgate Institute.

In her personal and creative writing, Routon explores themes of care, complicity, desire, and interdependence. She is particularly drawn to the question: What do we owe one another?

Before beginning her graduate studies, she worked with several arts organizations in Los Angeles, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Inner-City Arts. Most recently, she served as Head Archivist at William Allen Word & Image, an archive in London specializing in artist books and ephemera.