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 draw attention in historical geography to the darkest of histories, this piece will pivot on moments of discovering the dead to showcase the nuanced ways in which historical geography is opening doors into uncharted lives and unspoken histories

Digital archives, e-books and narrative space

In this paper we are concerned with the capacity of digital media to enable publics to tell their own environmental stories using digital broadcast archives (DBAs). We consider how digital media afford different ways of telling stories in relation to digital media archives. Central to this discussion is our experience of writing e‐books as part of the AHRC‐funded project “Earth in Vision: BBC coverage of environmental change 1960–2010”. The e‐book format has been adopted in order to explore some of the possibilities for writing environmental history and politics using DBAs

Dwelling in Strangeness: accounts of the Kingsley Hall Community, London (1965-1970)

This article explores archival accounts of the experimental community, Kingsley Hall (1965-70), established by R. D. Laing, the radical Scottish psychiatrist. The paper contributes to renewed interest in Kingsley Hall, R. D. Laing's radical psychiatry and UK counterculture. Archival sources enable not only the further exploration of already known figures but also let us hear previously unheard voices. Following a discussion of archival materials, the Hall is analyzed thematically and historically as (i) an inner spaceship; (ii) an embattled middle-class countercultural plantation; (iii) a site of spiritual renewal and development; (iv) a single-building arts colony; and (v) a countercultural experiment. Finally, it is argued that with re-evaluation of 1960s and 1970s counterculture now underway on the Left, the Hall’s experiment in Laingian countercultural psychiatry—as we may fittingly call it—may yet inform future radical projects (in mental health and beyond)

Integrated methylome and phenome study of the circulating proteome reveals markers pertinent to brain health

Characterising associations between the methylome, proteome and phenome may provide insight into biological pathways governing brain health. Here, we report an integrated DNA methylation and phenotypic study of the circulating proteome in relation to brain health. Methylome-wide association studies of 4058 plasma proteins are performed (N = 774), identifying 2928 CpG-protein associations after adjustment for multiple testing. These are independent of known genetic protein quantitative trait loci (pQTLs) and common lifestyle effects. Phenome-wide association studies of each protein are then performed in relation to 15 neurological traits (N = 1,065), identifying 405 associations between the levels of 191 proteins and cognitive scores, brain imaging measures or APOE e4 status. We uncover 35 previously unreported DNA methylation signatures for 17 protein markers of brain health. The epigenetic and proteomic markers we identify are pertinent to understanding and stratifying brain health

(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 presentness of the past. Utilizing R.D. Laing’s ‘archive’, his autobiography Wisdom, Madness and Folly (1985), and a documentary film that appeared as part of John McGreevy’s Cities project in the late 1970s, this paper seeks to explore Laing’s (re)remembered childhood worlds in order to think more explicitly about the significance of these different sites and spaces – and their memories – on his ways of interpreting and making sense of the world in the present. Storying (past) lives and (past) places in such a way brings to the fore the narrative quality of memory, opening up alternative ways of thinking about how memories are produced and (re)told

Needles, picks and an intern named Laing: exploring the psychiatric spaces of Army life

This paper delves into the world of medical and Army psychiatric practice in Britain during the 1950s, in order to reveal the importance of thinking geographically about the life and work of Scottish psychiatrist and psychotherapist Ronald David Laing (1927–1989). The paper first discusses the previous biographical literature produced on Laing and his own autobiography, arguing that by viewing Laing’s life and work through a geographical lens certain underexplored spaces, sites and places emerge. The following sections will detail Laing’s time spent as an intern in the West of Scotland Neurological Unit at Killearn, where he first endured the harsh working realities of medical practice and where critical debates in 1950s mental health care were playing out in a microcosm. These included the controversial treatment of lobotomy and the brewing tensions between neurology and psychiatry. As Laing’s career took a military turn and he was posted to work within the insulin coma unit of the Royal Victoria Military Hospital in Netley, it is possible to highlight the development of Laing’s thoughts on the treatment of psychiatric patients in the hands of the Army, and how he attempted to come to terms with these practices in his own unique way. Using the experimental practice of insulin coma therapy as an example, this paper seeks to demonstrate how the space of treatment itself was active in shaping Laing’s future engagements with his psychiatric patients

Special Issue: "Other Psychotherapies” – Healing Interactions Across Time, Geography and Culture [Guest Editors]

No abstract available