Knowing, creativity and experiment
How can we creatively and experimentally intervene in ways of knowng the world? What can we contribute to understandings of past creative or experimental traditions, including ones producing scientific or therapeutic knowledges? What sorts of links can be forged with current practitioners in creative, environmental and public arts?
We are one of the few human geography clusters worldwide with a long-standing tradition, from the late-1990s, of funded engagement with artists-in-residence and have a consistent and vibrant research tradition setting standards in arts and humanities research, and forging distinctive links with practitioners in creative, environmental and public arts. Through academic and non-academic publishing – and by way of spoken and co-written words, film, theatre, performance and body work, musical composition, audio recording, public broadcasting, museum collections, visual art and storytelling – we are working the ground between academic geography, collaborative partnership and forms of critical creativity.
We are committed to thinking critically about the social situations, and spatial relations, that enable experiment, expression and display in science, the arts, and the sites where these cultures converge. Our approach to methodological design pushes at disciplinary ‘norms’, exploring conventions and limit points in practices ranging from the creative arts to archival science and the ethnographic tradition. We attempt to bring the world to life through research that challenges conventional understandings of geographical inquiry, engagement and education, thereby creating novel and vital ways to encounter contemporary social situations, and to animate past landscapes, earthbound forms and atmospheric phenomena.
Selected publications (please go to staff pages for links to copies of publications or journal sites):
DeSilvey, C., Naylor, S. and Sackett, C. (eds) (2011) Anticipatory History, Uniform Books.
Dixon, D.P. (2011) Scream: the sound of the monstrous. Cultural Geographies, 18 (4). pp. 435-455.
Dixon, D.P., H. M. Hawkins, and E. R. Straughan. (2013) Wonder-full geomorphology: Sublime aesthetics and the place of art, Progress in Physical Geography 37: 227-247.
Gallagher, M. and Prior, J. (2013) Sonic geographies: exploring phonographic methods. Progress in Human Geography
Gallagher, M. (2011) Sound, space and power in a primary school. Social and Cultural Geography, 12 (1). pp. 47-61.
Lorimer, H. (2012) Surfaces and Slopes. Performance Research 17(2).
McGeachan, C. (2013) Needles, picks and an intern named Laing: exploring the psychiatric spaces of Army life. Journal of Historical Geography (forthcoming).
Naylor, S.K. (2010) Regionalising science: placing knowledges in Victorian England (Pickering and Chatto).
Parr, H. (2007) Collaborative film-making as process, method and text in mental health research. Cultural Geographies 14: 114-38.
Plowman, L., and Stevenson, O. (2012). Using mobile phone diaries to explore children's everyday lives. Childhood, 19 (4): 539-553.
Shaw, I., and Sharp, J. (2013) Playing with the future: social irrealism and the politics of aesthetics. Social and Cultural Geography 14(3): 341-359.
Straughan, E.R.&Dixon, D.P.Rhythm and Mobility in the Inner and Outer Hebrides: Archipelago as art-science research site, Mobilities. (in press).
Straughan, E.R. and Nicholson, P.J. (2013) From the Enlightenment to Test Bed for the Future: Edinburgh International Science Festival, Leonardo Reviews Quarterly (May), http://leonardo.info/reviews/may2013/straughan-nicholson-enlightment.php
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