Pages: 5

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the philosophical commitments that shape their conceptualisations and practices of research. It explains the ethical shifts that have been made in human geography research. The book argues that, in many ways, there was a time and place for damage-centered research. It explores the consideration of decision making in research as a political act that serves to reinforce or resist existing power structures emerges as a predominant theme. The book provides postgraduate students and more senior academics alike with reference points for summative methods discussions within some of the core sub-disciplinary areas. It emphasises examples from their research and the research of others to reflect the fluid, emotional, and pragmatic realities of research.

Pages: 2

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 15

The mid-twentieth-century debate around whether geography should be ideographic, and descriptively study the unique, or nomothetic, and seek law-like explanatory generalizations, was sparked in 1953 by Fred K. Schaefer. Schaefer was a political refugee from Nazi Germany and not trained as a geographer. Nonetheless, he was a professor in the Geography Department at the University of Iowa, when he penned the paper that attacked America’s most famous and powerful geographer, Richard Hartshorne. Hartshorne’s celebrated book, The Nature of Geography (1939) defined, justified and genealogically fixed geography as an ideographic science, that is, “concerned with the description and interpretation of unique cases ....” (Hartshorne 1939, 449). Schaefer’s paper excoriated all of Hartshorne’s claims, both historical and philosophical. His alternative was the philosophy of logical positivism originating in Austria during the 1920s with a group of philosophers, scientists and mathematicians collectively known as the Vienna Circle. Logical positivism said that for any knowledge to be taken seriously as knowledge it must be expressible as a law-like generalization. When Hartshorne read Schaefer’s critique, he was apoplectic. He wrote two virulent replies denying all of Schaefer’s charges. Schaefer, though, was already dead so couldn’t reply. But others did. Over the next decade some form of logical positivism took hold in the discipline and geography was never the same again.

Pages: 15

A half-century after his death, Carl O. Sauer’s inspirational presence continues to hover over the discipline of geography, his legacy unmatched by any other twentieth-century geographer of standing. Born on Christmas Eve, 1889, of German immigrant stock in Warrenton, Missouri, at the time a farming community some 50 miles west of St. Louis, Sauer’s European roots did much to shape him, as did being raised a Christian by deeply religious parents. Upon arrival in California in 1923, Sauer was keen to engage firsthand the America that lay south of the Río Grande, but that would have to wait. He had unfinished business, of sorts, to settle with the American Midwest that had once been home but no longer was, his penchant to move on as much intellectual as it was residential, if not more so.

Pages: 8

The argument that will be made in this chapter is that the Quantitative Revolution is really a misnomer for what might better have been called a “model and systems” revolution. The chapter is divided into four parts. In the first part, Setting the Stage, the argument as to why models and systems thinking came to dominate the Quantitative Revolution is explained. What follows in the next part is a recounting of some of the best known and arguably most important examples of how modelling and systems thinking developed in human geography. The third part examines how the limitations of models and systems thinking evoked reactions that were both philosophic and methodological rejections of what the Quantitative Revolution had become. The other sub-theme that is highlighted is how changes in technology (e.g., the shift from mainframe computing to personal computing), also weakened the importance of statistical and mathematical modelling in favour of geographical information systems. In the conclusion, it is argued that the Quantitative Revolution was the starting point for a series of methodological shifts in human geography that were tied to philosophic and technological shifts that are likely to continue to shape human geography in new ways in the future.

Pages: 14

In this chapter, I concentrate on aspects of the intersection between human geography—a way of understanding and making sense of the world—and geographic information systems, geographical information science, and cartography—methods, tools and modes of representation that inform how geographers measure and describe the world. I will do that from a personal perspective based on my background as a geographer, cartographer, and geographic information scientist (GIScientist) that has worked and is interested in questions related primarily to history and historical geography, and in particular in the geographies of the Holocaust. The intersection between GIS and geographic information science (GIScience) on one side, and human geography on the other, is at the same time quite broad and quite narrow, for while the methods and tools of GIScience and GIS can be deployed across the various subdisciplines that compose human geography, at their core these techniques do one thing: measure the value of quantitative data. This not only leaves out, at least for the most part, qualitative data, but also underscores the fact that the meaning of these measurements is often outside the subject matter of GIS and GIScience and needs to be interpreted according to models and theories which reside elsewhere: GIS and GIScience unearth relationships between data, but do not explain them. The case of cartography is somewhat different, as maps are both a way of measuring and representing the world and also, offer a window into the times, ideologies, social norms, and worldview of the cultures and societies that produced them. My purpose is to illustrate the intersection between topics with GIS, GIScience, and cartography, and in doing so I will simplify and generalize concepts and ideas that are more fully developed elsewhere.

Pages: 9

This chapter offers a critical reflection on the methodological ‘turns’ experienced within human geography over recent decades and their implications for research practice. It is written from a self-consciously personal perspective. This is for two reasons. First, I draw upon first-hand experience as a window through which to make critical observations, drawing on almost four decades since beginning doctoral research. Second, I offer personal recollections because to do otherwise and adopt a conventionally ‘detached’ scientific stance would be to risk perpetuating an unhelpful trope in geography: the vantage point of the disembodied and dispassionate observer. Sketching a series of encounters that precipitated my own turns in perspective, I examine two turns that have occurred in the course of qualitative human geography: those towards the mobile body and the visual.

Pages: 13

The chapter introduces the intellectual lineage of intersectionality in international and transhistorical context. Intersectionality is ‘best thought of as an analytical sensibility;’ it is the product of more than a century’s thinking by women of color under the U.S. empire and particularly by African-American women about their embodied experiences (Cho, Crenshaw and McCall 2013: 795). While we hesitate to characterize the passionate discussions around intersectional geographies as debates per se, the chapter weaves its consideration of methodologies through the inclusion of feminist/racialized/queer work; the need to honor intersectionality’s intellectual and material roots; eschewing intersectionality when focusing exclusively on identities; and embracing the complexities of lives and spaces that intersectional analyses open up. A variety of methodologies including activism, quantitative techniques, and especially qualitative modes of inquiry are considered. Alongside an intellectual history of intersectionality, we set geography’s origins in colonization and feminism’s entrée into the academy. By comparison, feminist geographers entered this scene of sense-making and praxis even more recently. We center Black/intersectional feminism (positioning white feminism on the periphery), and argue that only the former can anchor a truly feminist geography.

Pages: 11

The field of geography has been slow to acknowledge and support the ontological and epistemological transformations necessary to make geography a place where Indigenous scholars and communities feel belonging and are nurtured in their scholarship. In this chapter, we take a story-based approach to share key insights from our own pathways to becoming Indigenous geographers. We draw upon pivotal moments where our ontological perspectives were challenged – by colleagues, the politicized context of our research, or by our own embeddedness in complex communities – and we recollect how those moments were transformational in our pathways to becoming. We associate our narratives with three key imperatives for decolonizing geographical research. First, research ought to demonstrate relevance for Indigenous communities. Second, research methods must recognize Indigenous intelligence and ways of knowing. Third, the reformation of qualitative methodologies must make space for Indigenous leadership in and sovereignty over research. We share these learnings to engage others in their journeys of decolonization. We encourage geographers to think in more critical ways about their own practices, behaviors and ways of knowing as they relate to Indigenous peoples and topics.

Pages: 10

Human geography has always been deeply connected with the humanities. In the last decade, however, there has been a resurgence of creative, arts-based and, increasingly, critical-philosophical frameworks for producing geographic knowledge. These theoretical frameworks (geohumanities methodologies) inspire a growing number of applied research methods, teaching pedagogies, social justice activism, and other ways of seeing and making the world, including (to name a few): geopoetics, storytelling, photovoice, videography, performance, storyboarding, and art making. Geohumanities, as a methodology inspiring a series of applied methods being taken up in subdisciplines from Health Geography to Cultural Geography, from Feminist Geography to Indigenous Geography, remains a complex, evolving, and sometimes contested concept. This chapter provides a short history of geohumanities and then charts its growth in human geography, from journals to classrooms, from textbooks to social justice interventions. The chapter explores a number of key research techniques driven by an advancement of geohumanities methodologies. Finally, the chapter considers how geohumanities methodologies might be slowly shifting the very contours of contemporary human geography, opening the discipline to still unknown spaces of collaboration, growth, and possibility.

Pages: 4

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 14

Within human geography, the capturing of human emotions and affective response to and in place, has remained an elusive but ongoing topic of interest. As Anderson and Smith (2001) note, excluding emotion from wider thinking within human geography, ‘makes for anaemic knowledges’. Translating felt responses to place has been a subject of interest from 1970s’ phenomenological work to more contemporary affective and more-than-representational geographical research. Shifting ideas on how best to capture place-based emotions is reflected in an array of methods used over time. This chapter describes the evolution of those methods; ranging from initial explorations of identity and interaction using narrative-based methods, through subsequent theoretical ideas made real in ethnographic and kinetic forms, and on to contemporary methods that mix quantitative measurement, citizen response and more creative approaches. Always complex, ineffable and contested, the relevance of emotions across a wide range of human geographies remains as important now as in the 1970s.

Pages: 11

Where is sexuality and how is it lived and negotiated in space? Geographers of sexualities have sought to respond to these questions through diverse and necessarily political approaches to the production of geographic knowledges, imaginations, and space. This chapter surveys how geographers have approached the socio-spatial study of sexualities, from putting sexualities on the map and locating sexual spaces and identities to more recent articulations of a specifically queer political and analytical attunement to space. Methodologically, geographers of sexualities and queer geographers have foregrounded the necessity of asking questions not only about what and where we know, but also how we come to know. Through analyses and critiques of methodological, epistemological, and political commitments and practice, we offer a series of provocations meant to challenge the foundational categories, conceptualizations, norms, and institutions that shape research on sexual lives and the materiality and lived experience of sexual and sexualized subjects. This chapter poses a set of potential queer methodological investments and considerations, challenging the reader to consider the possibilities of and in queering geographic knowledge production.

Pages: 10

Assemblage theory has risen in profile across the discipline of geography in recent years, but within political geography more attention has been paid to its ontology than its methodological implications. This chapter begins with a summary of assemblage theory for newcomers, before turning to how existing methodologies in the social sciences can speak to spatio-tempo963.*-ral scales ‘above’ and ‘below’ individual human perception. First, we consider the micro-relations of everyday life, specifically how ethnographic approaches allow for the documentation of affective circulations and their impact on threshold moments. After that, we consider the longue durée of space-time, re-thinking archival methods for geologic time and other more-than-human scales. In conclusion, we note that thinking of assemblage-as-methodology opens up new potentials through its extension of ‘the field’ into new sites and scales.c

Pages: 17

In this chapter we explore decolonizing methodologies through an examination of research approaches to Indigenous environmental geographies. Such approaches disrupt, resist, and challenge Western research hegemony. We note increasing numbers of opportunities for Indigenous research, including within ‘mainstream’ (and well-funded) research programs, and outline specific research techniques, particularly qualitative techniques, currently being employed by Indigenous researchers and research partners. Potential challenges and issues are considered, especially in regard to processes and efforts to co-design and co-produce research projects and outcomes. We first examine how Indigenous worldviews, values, and beliefs underpin Indigenous research ethics and methodologies. Second, we summarize the development of Indigenous research paradigms and frameworks, and the interface between Indigenous and non-Indigenous research frameworks. Next, we explore how Indigenous scholars (and their partners) around the globe are adjusting old and creating new research methods to fit their different socio-cultural contexts. Lastly, we examine how Indigenous modes of interviewing advance Indigenous peoples’ knowledge, values, connectivity, and ways of relating to different places and phenomena in ways that seek to decolonize environmental narratives.

Pages: 12

In this chapter, we explore the importance of stories and storytelling as both a methodology for interrogating contemporary forms of coloniality, and a praxis for engaging strategies of resistance. There is a long and varied history of engagement with stories and storytelling among geographers. In the 1990s scholars concerned themselves with the way that stories were imbricated in relations of power, and the way that stories were not necessarily innocent acts of representation, but rather, narratives reflective of a view from somewhere. Some scholars have used stories and storytelling to open new methods of creative experimentation and modes of engagement between writers and readers/listeners. While others have mobilized stories and storytelling as an effective tool to affect social, economic and political change. Particularly among cultural geographers, where in recent times storying has been most actively engaged, scholars argue that stories have the capacity to open avenues for new conceptual frameworks and forms of praxis. Within this emergent literature much attention has been paid to the ways that stories can be understood as responses to dominant discourses as well as interventions that disrupt and recalibrate them. In the burgeoning literature, scholars agree that stories are more than representations of worlds of experience and feeling, they have the capacity to create radical openings that move people to act and imagine in ways that can shift and change a terrain of struggle (Gibson-Graham 2006, Hunt 2013, Wynter and McKittrick 2015, Alagraa 2018).

Pages: 10

This chapter considers a simple methodological question: what does it mean to approach archives geographically? Reflections over the last few decades have seen scholars in different disciplines engage with debates about the constitution of archives, the unevenness of sources, and the historical marginalization of groups through processes of record collection and keeping. Yet, it has often been less clear in these discussions how a geographer’s reading of the archive might differ from, say, that of a historian. Building on the work of Antoinette Burton, we call for ‘geographical antagonism’ in methodological approaches to archives. We argue that the historical geographies of collections – how they came to be located in specific places, the geographical imaginations they supported, and indeed the work they continue to do – are fundamental to the cultural, social, and political stories they might tell. In the first section of the chapter, we consider these questions in relation to the spaces and organization of physical archives. In the second part, we consider the extent to which digital platforms might hide these important geographies.

Pages: 13

This chapter contributes methodological reflections raised by Black geographies. We contend that methodologies are not merely a form of investigating, gathering, and processing information but rather one component of political orientation and position in producing engaged knowledge. We argue that political and epistemological challenges and commitments inherent to Black geographies imply the exercise of theoretical and methodological creativity. Understanding spatialized race relations and analyzing everyday spatial experiences from a critical racial analysis requires new pathways for spatial imagination. This article asks: what are the methodological implications brought to light by Black geographies? What strategies can be seen to emerge nurtured by these projects? We present a systematization of how Black geographies have developed spatialized readings of race relations. We identify three exercises of imagination around race relations founded on “rationales based in space.” Then, we examine strategies for reimagining the methodologies in line with what has come to be called Black geographies.

Pages: 11

Within the ‘digital turn’ in geography, this chapter explores scholarship on the ways processes of technological change are differentially produced, experienced, and contested in the spaces of everyday life. Questioning the evolving role of digital systems in everyday life requires rethinking ontological and epistemological assumptions around the production of space and place, the im/materialities of digital life, relationship between technological and (post)human agencies, and multiple forms of inequality and difference in relation to or produced by digital systems. Geographers combine and experiment with a range of methodological approaches to “open the black box” of the internal logics of particular digital systems, or to follow those systems as they come to have effects in the world. Genealogical research can highlight the development of digital technologies in their social, political, and economic context, while ethnographic and participatory research aims to understand how individuals and communities experience or may contest processes of digital change in the spaces in which they live. This chapter explores how combinations of multiple methods can allow geographers to better understand the complex, entangled, and emergent nature of digitally-mediated life, offering as an example Lynch’s (2020a) experience conducting ethnographic research with community-based technology collectives in Barcelona.

Pages: 20

Uncertainty is inevitably embedded in geographic data. While uncertainty can occur in locations and attributes, attribute uncertainty is a concern more frequently than location uncertainty in human geography research. Socio-economic phenomena are often measured based on areal units and utilized in geographic research using GIS and statistical methods, where sampling, measurement, and specification errors are commonly embedded. Because uncertainty in socio-economic variables can result in unreliable results, it is crucial to recognize uncertainty in geographic data, to understand propagation of uncertainty in data processing, and to incorporate uncertainty into data analysis and modeling properly. This chapter discusses uncertainty in data, specifically census data, first and then recent developments in uncertainty visualization, spatial pattern measurement with uncertainty, and uncertainty issues in spatial analysis and modeling.

Pages: 17

This chapter discusses the various theoretical and methodological tensions and their ontologies that are present within the discipline of human geography, with a particular focus on the sub-discipline of health geography. We begin by discussing several important ‘pillars’ of knowledge, and points of tension, to paint a rich background to situate the reader. Further, we articulate and explore the practical as well as methodological challenges and opportunities of linking health, location and (big) data in spatio-temporally fine-grained forms, before examining and explaining the process of moving towards innovative methodological approaches. We then deal with the praxis, using case studies of several international research projects, to appraise some of the important opportunities and challenges of undertaking geographical research in large interdisciplinary projects. We conclude by weaving together the salient lessons learned and positing a future research agenda, optimistically expecting further methodological innovation.

Pages: 13

This chapter traces the trajectory of disability geography to consider the potential of mixing quantitative and qualitative approaches for generating new geographic insights into the everyday experiences of disabled individuals. We begin with an overview of disability concepts and definitions, followed by a summary of major historical and intellectual developments in disability geography. Then, we explore the possibilities for mixing methods, using illustrative studies on: the socio-spatial mobilities of individuals living with visual impairment, the socio-spatial educational environments of young pupils with disabilities, and the socio-spatial practice of critical accessibility mapping. The chapter ends with reflections on researcher positionality and directions for future scholarship.

Pages: 13

This chapter charts key methodological developments in animal geography over the last decade and reviews both conventional and emergent methods in this subdiscipline. Even if research has historically privileged the imaginary and material ordering of animals by humans or used animals as a window to understand human society, there is an increasing drive to focus on the lived experiences of animals themselves. The chapter critically discusses how the field has taken up the use of methodological tools from other disciplines such as ethology and genetic analysis for this. It then evaluates the relative strengths and limitations of conventional social science and cross-disciplinary/emergent methods in studying human-animal relationships at multiple scales to explore how these might contribute separately or together in achieving the field’s more-than-human ambitions.

Pages: 9

Urban geography is one of the more well-established sub-disciplines in human geography. In this chapter, two of its “key” methodological and theoretical challenges are introduced and discussed. The argument is that these are likely to continue to characterize work within urban geography and they are the intellectual faultiness along which its future is being made. In introducing the contributions and developments in the areas of comparative urbanism and relational urbanisms the chapter concludes with no single, overarching argument. For many in urban geography these are exciting, interesting and – yes – awkward and challenging times. Existing understandings of the urban are being questioned. The past “narrow” geographies of urban theory production are being slowly replaced by a wider set of locations out of which are being generated concepts and theories. Emerging slowly is a more creative, experimental, diverse and global set of comparisons in and through which is being made the future of the sub-discipline, involving researchers in universities around the world.

Pages: 16

This chapter focuses on a sub-field of economic geography that has activism at its core: community economies. We begin by situating community economies research within economic geography, in doing so placing our methodological discussion in the context of broader intellectual trends. The chapter then focuses on three challenges shaping community economies methodology today. In contextual challenges of uncertainty, we explore how community economies researchers are “staying with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016), rejecting simplification in favour of unknown yet hopeful possibility. Embracing our work as a ‘performative ontological practice’, community economies research has a clear political agenda in this methodological ‘making of other worlds’, one that is guided by ethical economic principles and practice. A central challenge in this work is how our methodology, and use of particular methods, is created and enacted with human and more-than-human others. This includes working with those of other intellectual traditions and different ontologies and well as more-than-human participants whose agency is often not recognized.

Pages: 11

This chapter provides a critical appraisal of the key methodologies used in generating an exciting body of geographical scholarship around education and learning, with a focus on three areas of productive tensions: data, scale/mobilities, and pedagogy. The first section discusses what constitutes data in extant research on the geographies of education and the politics and ethics, which shape our definitions and emphases. The second section explores the question of scale to reflect on how scholars have drawn the parameters of their research field and, at the same time, offer some thoughts on the role of mobilities thinking (and mobile methodologies) in researching contemporary and diversifying forms of educational and learning spaces. The last section explores the potential of researching with pedagogies and pedagogic research in enriching the current subfield, linking such methodological prospects with an ongoing interest in the creative connections between geographies of education and education of geography. We conclude with a suggestion for greater attention to ideas of data, scale/mobilities, and pedagogy to develop a capacious methodological imagination for geographies of education.

Pages: 16

Participatory methods value children’s experiences as multi-faceted, contested, and dynamic and can be used in children’s geographies to examine uses, preferences, experiences, and opinions concerning outdoor play environments. The first part of the chapter examines key disciplinary and societal changes that have transformed how children are involved in research. It is not enough to have child participants – children’s participation must be meaningful, and methods need to highlight diverse ways children can contribute including but not limited to data collection. Critical attention is paid in the second part as to how barriers such as power dynamics between children and adults can limit all children’s participation, with specific sub-groups further marginalized due to gender, ability, ethnicity, indigeneity, and socio-economic status. The third part provides two examples of research projects which integrated participatory methods, which reflect the shifts in perspectives and approaches detailed earlier. The first example uses photovoice with individual teens with significant neurological conditions to explore their perspectives and experiences of the physical and social environment of their summer camp. In the second, a suite of participatory methods is used with a group of elementary school students to research youth and community needs to inform the redevelopment of their school play yard.

Pages: 14

With the overall aim of trying to raise consciousness and awareness about anarchist geography in the context of research, this chapter is divided into two key sections. The first section focuses on ‘anarchism, anarchist geographies and research’. The second section addresses the more comprehensive inter-locking question of, “What are anarchist methodologies in human geography, and how should anarchist research be disseminated?” Bringing these dilemmas under the focus of the chapter, we ask what is the point of anarchist research if it is exclusionary, only accessible to those who can converse in English, heard by those who are privileged enough to afford to pay (or have their institutions pay) exorbitant conference fees, and/or read by those able to spend £100+ on a Handbook produced by a private publishing company for profit? The chapter, however, concludes on an optimistic note. As anarchist geographies continue to gather momentum in our time of crisis and crises, they carry with them the hope of a better world. It is our hope that many readers will seriously reflect on how they may connect, or more fully align, their research with these anarchist lines of flight in mind.

Pages: 81

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 9

This chapter explores the ethical and methodological challenges of researching sensitive and political issues in the urban context. Rather than offering a list of ‘how to’ points for projects on ethnic diversity, religious discrimination, or everyday marginalisation, this chapter maps out some of the complex political challenges that are faced by those who undertake qualitative research in such environments. First, we focus attention on the prevailing politics, including national and international politics, elections, political leaders, local government and the connected issues of representation. The point is to emphasise the need to be alert to these issues and sympathetic to their influences while undertaking fieldwork rather than to concentrate exclusively on the methods. Second, we discuss the role of institutions in doing qualitative research, including voluntary and community groups, schools, colleges, universities and religious institutions such as churches, mosques, gurdwaras and synagogues. They are all located within and are implicated by the politics mentioned previously; moreover, they represent potentially fruitful settings in which to work, although at times challenging. Here, we focus attention on working with gatekeepers, being sensitive to positionalities in the field and producing diverse and alternative outputs for the various audiences.

Pages: 10

Rural spaces are changing and increasing in complexity, with unique practical and methodological challenges for researchers. This complexity is partly due to the constant reconstitution of rural spaces materially and socially through micro and macro processes of social interaction. The interminable evolution of the ‘rural’ and the associated complexity has implications on how rural geographies are (re)produced. This complexity further reinforces the need for continuous reflection on how human geographers can adapt our methodological approaches and tools to navigate prevailing and emerging challenges. Among the diverse fieldwork challenges geographers are confronted with is the daunting task of navigating the ‘outsider/insider’ identity, socio-cultural norms and building trust. The evolution of new socio-political relations such as partisan politics and their deep embeddedness in the social fabric of rural communities further implies that geographers researching rural phenomena must consciously navigate their identities to establish trust with differently positioned rural dwellers. In this contribution, we provide a brief theoretical reflection on the implications of the ‘rural’ as a constantly evolving socio-spatial construct for geographic research. We also draw upon our rich lived experiences with, and research in, diverse ruralities in Africa to highlight some of the challenges and complexities of doing research in rural settings. The discussion focuses on how particular challenges of rural research, including but not limited to those related to trust in outsider-community relations, positionality, and conflicts with socio-cultural norms, can be navigated. While the insights we share in this contribution are by no means intended to constitute a blueprint for rural research, we leverage practical encounters from rural case studies to contribute to and to stimulate the discussion on everyday challenges of doing fieldwork in complex rural areas and strategies for navigating these challenges.

Pages: 13

Participatory geographies involve equitable collaborations with people and places in ways that reflect their priorities in an effort to seek justice and create positive change. Such a goal is not easy or tidy, nor is it without issues of power and representation of voice, agency, and diversity. In this chapter we provide a genealogy of participatory research in and beyond the academy, before turning to its specific rise in geography. We cover the critiques and outline the trends, tensions and emerging questions in this niche area of geographic inquiry. For those new to this approach, we issue a cautionary note: participatory geography is not for the faint of heart or the rigid of mind. As activist-scholars currently in the academy, we know how important diplomacy can be but there are also times for shit-kicking in navigating the colonial, patriarchal, ableist, and heteronormative structures of these institutional spaces.

Pages: 10

Lived experience is an increasingly popular, and yet also problematic, notion. Experiences are situated and attempting to define what is discrete and valuable about employing the concept of ‘lived’ experience is not straightforward. A geographical lens offers a way of acknowledging situatedness and context. Human geography explores this by documenting how different material, social, and cultural environments and inequalities intersect with lived experience as the intrinsically corporeal link between practice and perception. The growing interest in lived experience has occurred alongside the continued widening of social and economic inequalities. Lived experience offers a mechanism for exploring inequalities and, thereby, building an evidence base to inform responses to them. However, the inclusion of lived experience in research needs to be critical and has to more than a tokenistic or procedural exercise. This chapter reflects on the practical and theoretical issues of researching the lived experience of inequalities.

Pages: 14

Human geography has been the site of much methodological experimentation and innovation, particularly when it comes to questions of how -and indeed, whether -to ‘go beyond representation’. Most recently, this latter question has emerged in new ways through the post-humanist/non-representational turn and rise of ‘post-qualitative’ approaches that challenge traditional notions of subjectivity and relationality in geographical research. Methodologically, this movement has seen researchers creatively develop hybrid methods that attempt to capture and report more-than-representational and more-than-human processes and phenomena. This chapter traces the lineage of these ideas, before exploring how – and why – existing geographical methods might be tweaked, extended, or supplemented in order to 1) acknowledge both human and non-human agency, 2) retain fidelity and authenticity to events, accounting for their activity and energy, rather than just explaining them, and 3) highlight that our own research is in every way a performative production that can just as much create change in the world as well as create ideas for the world. Addressing these challenges, requires the invoking of sensory and embodied methods, arts-based practices, performative approaches to narratives, the mobilisation of novel technologies, and indeed, new ways of writing research.

Pages: 12

This chapter explores the relationship between feminist slow scholarship and geographical research methodologies. A group of feminist geographers comprising five graduate students and four tenured faculty across five universities in Canada and the United States came together (virtually) in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and uprisings against racism to reflect on how principles of feminist slow scholarship can inform geographical research methodologies. In the process of our collective writing and reflection, we identified feminist care ethics, attention to temporality, and embodied emotional labour as interconnected elements from feminist slow scholarship that are also fundamental to research. We explore these elements through examples drawn from our own experiences. We conclude that feminist slow scholarship offers a way of doing care-full research as part of collective endeavours to change the university and world around us.

Pages: 11

This chapter discusses methodological approaches that can help shape the design and practice of research to better support effective policy development. A review of the literature suggests that there are a series of interconnected bottlenecks that challenge the use of research findings in policymaking. A series of potential additions to the basic scientific method are proposed to address these bottlenecks, including early engagement with decision makers in formulating the research question, expanded data collection, increased networking during the implementation of a research program, and expanded dissemination methods. Researchers seeking to influence policy development are urged to develop research questions that reflect political realities. The scope of research projects should be designed to match the scales at which policymakers operate, in order to be more relevant to these individuals. In disseminating research findings, researchers are urged to place their work in the context of the competing priorities that policymakers face, and to address issues of uncertainty in clear and instructive language. For human geographers seeking to influence policy development, the proposed modifications to research methodologies will increase the accessibility and utility of their work to the decision-making community.