Creative Methods for Human Geographers

This exciting volume shows how students, and anyone else, can tap into the wealth of new technologies available today along with their own creativity to produce different kinds of research projects that account for a diverse and dynamic world.

This exciting volume shows how students, and anyone else, can tap into the wealth of new technologies available today along with their own creativity to produce different kinds of research projects that account for a diverse and dynamic world.

This collection does two main things. Firstly, it invigorates methodological discussion in Human Geography by bringing together an exciting range of new approaches which will inspire (as well as guide) students through their research adventures. Secondly, it provides an in depth revision of some more familiar methods, through exciting updates and empirical examples.

The title itself produces high expectations that are fully met. This book reflects the current debates about methods in geography in the context of cultural turn, postmodern identities, othering, positionality and research ethics, creatively implements them and promotes methodical innovation within the geographical application of methods.

Nadia von Benzon is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Lancaster University with particular interest in the social geographies of childhood, youth and motherhood, and in disability and health geography and therapeutic landscapes. She recently edited the volumes Intersectionality and Difference in Childhood and Youth: Global Perspectives with Catherine Wilkinson, published in Routledge’s Spaces of Childhood and Youth series. Nadia is currently writing up recent research in the area of children’s historical geography exploring Victorian reformatory farms and child migration to New Zealand and embarking in online research exploring birth stories.  Mark Holton is a social and cultural geographer at the University of Plymouth. His research interests address the geographies of higher education students and focuses on mobility, belonging and identity. Mark’s publications have covered a range of topics, from mobilities and belonging in 21st Century higher education, to youth transitions, international student mobility and traditional or non-traditional student identities. He recently co-authored a book entitled Everyday Mobile Belonging: Theorising Higher Education Student Mobilities (Bloomsbury Academic). Catherine Wilkinson is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Liverpool John Moores University. Catherine works at the intersection of a range of research approaches, including: mixed methods, ethnographic and participatory research. Catherine’s primary research interests are children’s health experiences; young people and identity; community radio; and innovative methods. Catherine has an established reputation for making cutting-edge contributions, conceptually and methodologically, to research ‘with’ children and young people and uses this research to inspire teaching she delivers. Samantha Wilkinson is a senior lecturer in Childhood, Youth and Education Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. Samantha has written extensively of a range of themes including children and young people’s geographies and mobilities; young men’s performances of masculinities; home care for people with dementia; animal geographies; and home sharing network Airbnb. Through the research she conducts she uses innovative methodological approaches, including: joint ethnography; diaries; drawing elicitation interviews; mobile phone methods; and (auto)ethnography.