Approaching Human Geography

Chris Philo is a professor of geography at the University of Glasgow. His specialist interest is the historical geography of "spaces reserved for insanity," meaning people with mental health problems, across many centuries in Britain. He is fascinated by the history and theory of geography, as both academic subject and wider way of engaging with the world. He has undertaken critical-scholarly research on the geographies of "outsider" human groupings, including children and people with learning disabilities, as well as on the geographies of human-animal relations, rural geographies, and a range of health geographies. He has long been concerned with what psychoanalytic and psychological approaches can bring to geographical studies.