Cheryl Mcgeachan
Biographic Data
| ID | 82074 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cheryl Mcgeachan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cheryl |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcgeachan |
| SIGNATURE | MCGEACHAN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Glasgow |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7476-6218 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Waves: Collaborative geographical biography
This paper conveys the notion of collaborative geographical biography through enmeshed encounters with mental ill-health. In the context of researching the life of Art Extraordinary artist, Adam Christie, this paper argues for the importance of lived expression provided by ‘expert-by-experience’ researchers arriving in academic spaces, reflecting on the power that it holds for generating deeper understandings of the geographies of mental (ill-)he…
Geopsychiatry from below: Exploratory review and preliminary analysis
BACKGROUND: This contribution advances claims about 'geopsychiatry from below', attending to how 'voices' with lived experience of mental ill-health speak about 'the geo' or, more specifically, 'place and space'. AIMS: To explore relevant interdisciplinary literature for academic research, scholarship and commentary containing voices of experience speaking about the geo. METHODS: An 'indicative' and 'facilitative' review of relevant transdiscipli…
Geopsychiatry and geography: A response
Background: This contribution responds to three articles (we refer to all three as ‘editorials’) concerning something called ‘geopsychiatry’. Aims: To evaluate claims made in these editorials for ‘geopsychiatry’ as a new field of inquiry at the interface between geography and psychiatry. Method: Close critical reading of two editorials in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry – entitled ‘Geographical determinants of mental health’ and ‘P…
Growing love for the world: COP26 and finding your superpower
This short reflective piece charts my own experiences of working with young people (aged 5–11 years) during COP26 and offers some tentative reflections on the role of hope in emplaced geographical education. Through detailing the experiences of a community garden workshop in Drumchapel, Glasgow, this paper highlights the ways in which hope for the future in the face of climate adversity was both felt and seen by young people during COP26. In doin…
Hanging Around in Their Brokenness: On Mental Ill-Health Geography, Asylums and Camps, Artworks and Salvage
The subdisciplinary field of mental health geography has arguably departed from its initial emphasis on mental ill health, and a case is made for continuing to take seriously the lifeworlds of people with severe and enduring mental health conditions, particularly if resident in psychiatric inpatient facilities. Attempting to (re)humanize inquiries in this field, emphasis is lent to the task of repeopling mental health geographies and, more broadl…
Other psychotherapies: Healing interactions across time, geography, and culture
This article introduces the special issue of Transcultural Psychiatry entitled 'Other Psychotherapies': Healing Interactions across Time, Geographies, and Cultures. This special issue is intended to highlight that, rather than being exclusively a modern phenomenon, variants of psychotherapeutic practice have existed for millennia in diverse sociocultural contexts. This article explores the historical development of Western psychotherapy and point…
A prison within a prison”? Examining the enfolding spatialities of care and control in the Barlinnie Special Unit
This paper uses one of Scotland's most controversial experiments in penal reform – the Barlinnie Special Unit – to examine the enfolding nature of care and control in carceral space. Connecting with recent arguments relating to “caring architecture” and using the framework of historical carceral geographies, it showcases the spatial complexities of implementing caring practices alongside reforming tactics. Beginning with a discussion of the care …
Geographies of Medical and Health Humanities: A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation
In recent years, both within and beyond academic and clinical spheres, medical and health humanities have become increasingly influential. Drawing from interdisciplinary fields in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts, medical and health humanities present unique lenses for considering nuanced spaces and lived experiences of health and health care; they also help challenge traditional ways that medicine and health care are understood and …
Mental Health Geographies
Mental health geography is a subfield of the discipline that takes as its focus the spatial and place‐related implications of both the experience of mental ill‐health and the provision of treatment facilities and programs. Interest in the subfield has grown since the 1970s, when the key focus was the changing locational associations between services and users. The landscape of mental health care was dramatically altered through the processes of d…
‘The Head Carver’: Art Extraordinary and the small spaces of asylum
This paper uses the unique collection of Scottish outsider art, labelled Art Extraordinary, as a window into the often neglected small spaces of asylum care in the early twentieth century. By drawing upon materials from the Art Extraordinary collection and its associated archives, this paper demonstrates the importance of incorporating small and everyday spaces of care – such as gardens, paths, studios and boats – into the broader historical narr…
Historical geography III: Hope persists
The final report in this series focuses on the emerging intersections between historical geography, archaeology and the law. Whilst staying attuned to the darkest of geographies emerging from the sub-field, this report turns its attention to the creative and critical ways in which the dead are being used to reveal past lives and worlds that have been destroyed and forgotten. Using soil and the archaeological imagination as a pivot, this report ce…
Historical geography II: Traces remain
The second report in this series turns to focus on the trace in relation to life-writing and biography in historical geography and beyond. Through attention to tracing journeys, located moments and listening to the presence of ghosts (Ogborn, 2005), this report seeks to highlight the range of different ways in which historical geographers have explored lives, deaths, and their transient traces through varied biographical terrains. Continuing to d…
Historical geography I: What remains
This report uses the First World War as a way to open up current debates into issues of bodies, selves, battlefields, memory and death in historical geography and beyond. Sweeping through a range of scales, from the global nature of imperialist practices to the intimate spaces of the psyche, this report highlights the contributions that historical geographers are making to these studies and the creative approaches taken. The aim is to expose the …
The world is full of big bad wolves: Investigating the experimental therapeutic spaces of R.D. Laing and Aaron Esterson
In conjunction with the recent critical assessments of the life and work of R.D. Laing, this paper seeks to demonstrate what is revealed when Laing’s work on families and created spaces of mental health care are examined through a geographical lens. The paper begins with an exploration of Laing’s time at the Tavistock Clinic in London during the 1960s, and of the co-authored text with Aaron Esterson entitled, Sanity, Madness and the Family (1964)…
(Re)remembering and narrating the childhood city of R.D. Laing
In recent years, geographical engagements with issues surrounding different forms of memory have become increasingly diverse. Responding to Owain Jones’s recent call for more attention to be paid in geography to the individual and private memories that are crucial components in the makings of our lives, this paper seeks to investigate the processes of (re)remembering childhood worlds and the importance of thinking in more depth about the presentn…
Needles, picks and an intern named Laing: Exploring the psychiatric spaces of Army life
Historical geography II: Traces remain
The second report in this series turns to focus on the trace in relation to life-writing and biography in historical geography and beyond. Through attention to tracing journeys, located moments and listening to the presence of ghosts (Ogborn, 2005), this report seeks to highlight the range of different ways in which historical geographers have explored lives, deaths, and their transient traces through varied biographical terrains. Continuing to d…
Historical geography I: What remains
This report uses the First World War as a way to open up current debates into issues of bodies, selves, battlefields, memory and death in historical geography and beyond. Sweeping through a range of scales, from the global nature of imperialist practices to the intimate spaces of the psyche, this report highlights the contributions that historical geographers are making to these studies and the creative approaches taken. The aim is to expose the …
Hanging Around in Their Brokenness: On Mental Ill-Health Geography, Asylums and Camps, Artworks and Salvage
The subdisciplinary field of mental health geography has arguably departed from its initial emphasis on mental ill health, and a case is made for continuing to take seriously the lifeworlds of people with severe and enduring mental health conditions, particularly if resident in psychiatric inpatient facilities. Attempting to (re)humanize inquiries in this field, emphasis is lent to the task of repeopling mental health geographies and, more broadl…
A prison within a prison”? Examining the enfolding spatialities of care and control in the Barlinnie Special Unit
This paper uses one of Scotland's most controversial experiments in penal reform – the Barlinnie Special Unit – to examine the enfolding nature of care and control in carceral space. Connecting with recent arguments relating to “caring architecture” and using the framework of historical carceral geographies, it showcases the spatial complexities of implementing caring practices alongside reforming tactics. Beginning with a discussion of the care …
Historical geography III: Hope persists
The final report in this series focuses on the emerging intersections between historical geography, archaeology and the law. Whilst staying attuned to the darkest of geographies emerging from the sub-field, this report turns its attention to the creative and critical ways in which the dead are being used to reveal past lives and worlds that have been destroyed and forgotten. Using soil and the archaeological imagination as a pivot, this report ce…
Geographies of Medical and Health Humanities: A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation
In recent years, both within and beyond academic and clinical spheres, medical and health humanities have become increasingly influential. Drawing from interdisciplinary fields in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts, medical and health humanities present unique lenses for considering nuanced spaces and lived experiences of health and health care; they also help challenge traditional ways that medicine and health care are understood and …
The world is full of big bad wolves: Investigating the experimental therapeutic spaces of R.D. Laing and Aaron Esterson
In conjunction with the recent critical assessments of the life and work of R.D. Laing, this paper seeks to demonstrate what is revealed when Laing’s work on families and created spaces of mental health care are examined through a geographical lens. The paper begins with an exploration of Laing’s time at the Tavistock Clinic in London during the 1960s, and of the co-authored text with Aaron Esterson entitled, Sanity, Madness and the Family (1964)…
Needles, picks and an intern named Laing: Exploring the psychiatric spaces of Army life
Needles, picks and an intern named Laing: Exploring the psychiatric spaces of Army life
(Re)remembering and narrating the childhood city of R.D. Laing
In recent years, geographical engagements with issues surrounding different forms of memory have become increasingly diverse. Responding to Owain Jones’s recent call for more attention to be paid in geography to the individual and private memories that are crucial components in the makings of our lives, this paper seeks to investigate the processes of (re)remembering childhood worlds and the importance of thinking in more depth about the presentn…
Historical geography I: What remains
This report uses the First World War as a way to open up current debates into issues of bodies, selves, battlefields, memory and death in historical geography and beyond. Sweeping through a range of scales, from the global nature of imperialist practices to the intimate spaces of the psyche, this report highlights the contributions that historical geographers are making to these studies and the creative approaches taken. The aim is to expose the …
The world is full of big bad wolves: Investigating the experimental therapeutic spaces of R.D. Laing and Aaron Esterson
In conjunction with the recent critical assessments of the life and work of R.D. Laing, this paper seeks to demonstrate what is revealed when Laing’s work on families and created spaces of mental health care are examined through a geographical lens. The paper begins with an exploration of Laing’s time at the Tavistock Clinic in London during the 1960s, and of the co-authored text with Aaron Esterson entitled, Sanity, Madness and the Family (1964)…
Historical geography II: Traces remain
The second report in this series turns to focus on the trace in relation to life-writing and biography in historical geography and beyond. Through attention to tracing journeys, located moments and listening to the presence of ghosts (Ogborn, 2005), this report seeks to highlight the range of different ways in which historical geographers have explored lives, deaths, and their transient traces through varied biographical terrains. Continuing to d…
Mental Health Geographies
Mental health geography is a subfield of the discipline that takes as its focus the spatial and place‐related implications of both the experience of mental ill‐health and the provision of treatment facilities and programs. Interest in the subfield has grown since the 1970s, when the key focus was the changing locational associations between services and users. The landscape of mental health care was dramatically altered through the processes of d…
‘The Head Carver’: Art Extraordinary and the small spaces of asylum
This paper uses the unique collection of Scottish outsider art, labelled Art Extraordinary, as a window into the often neglected small spaces of asylum care in the early twentieth century. By drawing upon materials from the Art Extraordinary collection and its associated archives, this paper demonstrates the importance of incorporating small and everyday spaces of care – such as gardens, paths, studios and boats – into the broader historical narr…
Historical geography III: Hope persists
The final report in this series focuses on the emerging intersections between historical geography, archaeology and the law. Whilst staying attuned to the darkest of geographies emerging from the sub-field, this report turns its attention to the creative and critical ways in which the dead are being used to reveal past lives and worlds that have been destroyed and forgotten. Using soil and the archaeological imagination as a pivot, this report ce…
Geographies of Medical and Health Humanities: A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation
In recent years, both within and beyond academic and clinical spheres, medical and health humanities have become increasingly influential. Drawing from interdisciplinary fields in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts, medical and health humanities present unique lenses for considering nuanced spaces and lived experiences of health and health care; they also help challenge traditional ways that medicine and health care are understood and …
A prison within a prison”? Examining the enfolding spatialities of care and control in the Barlinnie Special Unit
This paper uses one of Scotland's most controversial experiments in penal reform – the Barlinnie Special Unit – to examine the enfolding nature of care and control in carceral space. Connecting with recent arguments relating to “caring architecture” and using the framework of historical carceral geographies, it showcases the spatial complexities of implementing caring practices alongside reforming tactics. Beginning with a discussion of the care …
Other psychotherapies: Healing interactions across time, geography, and culture
This article introduces the special issue of Transcultural Psychiatry entitled 'Other Psychotherapies': Healing Interactions across Time, Geographies, and Cultures. This special issue is intended to highlight that, rather than being exclusively a modern phenomenon, variants of psychotherapeutic practice have existed for millennia in diverse sociocultural contexts. This article explores the historical development of Western psychotherapy and point…
Growing love for the world: COP26 and finding your superpower
This short reflective piece charts my own experiences of working with young people (aged 5–11 years) during COP26 and offers some tentative reflections on the role of hope in emplaced geographical education. Through detailing the experiences of a community garden workshop in Drumchapel, Glasgow, this paper highlights the ways in which hope for the future in the face of climate adversity was both felt and seen by young people during COP26. In doin…
Hanging Around in Their Brokenness: On Mental Ill-Health Geography, Asylums and Camps, Artworks and Salvage
The subdisciplinary field of mental health geography has arguably departed from its initial emphasis on mental ill health, and a case is made for continuing to take seriously the lifeworlds of people with severe and enduring mental health conditions, particularly if resident in psychiatric inpatient facilities. Attempting to (re)humanize inquiries in this field, emphasis is lent to the task of repeopling mental health geographies and, more broadl…
Geopsychiatry and geography: A response
Background: This contribution responds to three articles (we refer to all three as ‘editorials’) concerning something called ‘geopsychiatry’. Aims: To evaluate claims made in these editorials for ‘geopsychiatry’ as a new field of inquiry at the interface between geography and psychiatry. Method: Close critical reading of two editorials in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry – entitled ‘Geographical determinants of mental health’ and ‘P…
Geopsychiatry from below: Exploratory review and preliminary analysis
BACKGROUND: This contribution advances claims about 'geopsychiatry from below', attending to how 'voices' with lived experience of mental ill-health speak about 'the geo' or, more specifically, 'place and space'. AIMS: To explore relevant interdisciplinary literature for academic research, scholarship and commentary containing voices of experience speaking about the geo. METHODS: An 'indicative' and 'facilitative' review of relevant transdiscipli…
Waves: Collaborative geographical biography
This paper conveys the notion of collaborative geographical biography through enmeshed encounters with mental ill-health. In the context of researching the life of Art Extraordinary artist, Adam Christie, this paper argues for the importance of lived expression provided by ‘expert-by-experience’ researchers arriving in academic spaces, reflecting on the power that it holds for generating deeper understandings of the geographies of mental (ill-)he…
Sociology (12 works) · History (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (5 works) · Human geography (5 works) · Social science (5 works) · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought (4 works) · History (4 works) · Law (4 works)