pathway: Human Geography

Through collaboration with the Eden Project, my research will work with communities in China, Chad, Colombia and Cornwall to elicit under-represented forms of climate change narrative using storytelling workshops.

My research examines the role of collective biographies of women and LGBTQ+ figures in diversifying children’s and young adult literature through narrating the lives and achievements of figures, past and present. I am interested in how the production of collective biographies of women and LGBTQ+ figures disrupts masculinist, heterosexual knowledge, and contributes to increasing the diversity of children’s literature. I aim to explore the successes, complexities and critiques of the content, themes and messages of children’s non-fiction literature, and will address how biography can be used to teach issues of gender and sexuality, perhaps providing potential solutions to the gaps in the school curriculum, created as a result of the unease surrounding feminist topics and LGBTQ+ education.

My PhD research traces the different health motivations, responses, and complications of OWS at Windermere, England’s largest lake in the Lake District National Park. Specifically, the research questions the different bodily, socio-cultural, political, and environmental factors that shape these relational experiences of ‘healthy’ OWS practice. This wet, psychogeographically influenced, ethnographic inquiry is situated at two popular public bathing sites (Rayrigg Meadow and Millerground) across a full 12-month season. The PhD will make novel methodological contributions to health geographies, psychogeographies, and other transdisciplinary OWS research, whilst encouraging broader public engagement with existing (and potential) communities invested in Windermere. For more information, please visit: www.swimdermere.com

Publications:

Butler-Eldridge, T. (2021). Taking a Pedagogic Chance with Psychogeography. RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2021 – 3rd Sept. [Online]. Royal Geographical Society: London.

Mcphie, J. and Butler-Eldridge, T. (2021). Slam Poetry, Giant Specs and a Psychogeography Monopoly Board: Progressive Directions for Outdoor Facilitation. In: Palmer, C. (Eds.). Arts-Based Learning in Outdoor Education. Sport and Wellbeing Press: Preston.

Butler-Eldridge, T., Bridger, A., Richardson, T., Cole, S. and Mcphie, J. (2019). Definitions, Debates and Directions for Contemporary Psychogeography. The Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography – 6th Sept. University of Huddersfield: Huddersfield.

Buddhist philosophy and the questions it poses regarding the boundary between nature/culture and self/other speaks clearly to contemporary human geographical questions concerning political ecology, inter-species relationships, care-giving, and environmental governance. Its unique contribution lies in bridging gaps between post-colonial and post-human critique. My research will investigate how Buddhist critique can help human geographies reconceive the politics of our more-than-human worlds in an age of planetary crisis.

Tom’s research examines the manifestation of neoliberalism in British society. By reinforcing examinations of British socioeconomic policy with spatial analysis of sociodemographics, inequalities, and voting outcomes, he aims to produce novel insights into attitudes and trends across different places in Britain.

Tom’s broader research interests include neoliberalism, political economy, international relations, voting, populism, social and political values, and spatial and statistical analysis, for which he predominantly uses R and QGIS.

My ethnographic research of diverse yoga practices and spaces will deploy a novel ‘moving interview’ method to contribute to debates on gendered and embodied geographies of health and wellbeing. Modern postural yoga has rapidly gained popularity in the West (Singleton, 2010), and this research will foreground practitioners’ lived experiences of the body in contemporary yoga spaces, enabling an exploration of new ontologies of wellbeing and gendered body shame. This will open up novel analytical lines towards understanding wellness outside of consumerist, neoliberal and medico-scientific discourses (Dolezal, 2012).

Homeless women’s bodies often transgress ideas about what a woman’s body “should be”, perceived as dirty, undesirable and out of place. However, it can be used as capital within the homeless community, unless it is layered with other transgressions such as bigness, sexuality or colour.

I am interested in the ways in which the body of the homeless woman is constructed, how these constructions influence its treatment and performance and how the homeless female body intersects with other identities.

My project concerns the development of a post-Brexit domestic agricultural policy and the emerging trade-offs between economic, environmental and social aims among key stakeholders. Ultimately, it will combine interviews, surveys and economic data in order to model potential outcomes.

I am interested in how foraging for feral foods in an urban setting can provide opportunities for learning about ecological literacy, defined as identification with urban nature, leading towards greater ecological consciousness. I have chosen urban public space as the site for the research as it is replete with counter hegemonic initiatives towards more equitable and socially just relationships with both human and non-human members of community. An urban ecology of feral food plants, which can be seen as a subset of alternative food networks, could provide informal, experiential and embodied ways to become more eco-centric as a species.