Additional information
by Paul Griffin (Author), Cheryl McGeachan (Author)
Historical Geographies: The Basics provides readers with a thorough grounding in a sub-discipline that revisits the past through a geographical lens. It encourages the reader to pursue researching the past in a usable manner, reflecting on the role of the past in the present and how it might inform geographical thinking.
Across seven chapters, the authors guide readers through their engagement with the past, via direct encounters with archives and memories, as well as buildings, artefacts and landscapes. It poses critical reflections on how we might work with the potential gaps and fragments in revisiting the past and the ways in which we can follow traces to unearth hidden histories. In doing so, it covers both conceptual questions and practical skills in historical geography. Critical questions include; how might we apply concepts and theories to case studies from the past? How does a researcher move from an historical idea, through to working in an archive, to writing historical geographies? Similarly, and perhaps more practically, how can we find archives or historical methods that work for our project?
The book will be of particular value to undergraduate and postgraduate geographers and historians. Whether taking a historical geography module, preparing a historical geography dissertation, or reflecting on how the past might inform engagement with geographical study, this book will provide a foundational understanding of the sub-discipline for students of global history, environmental history and further afield.
Author Biography
Paul Griffin is an Assistant Professor in Human Geography at Northumbria University. He teaches Historical Geographies: Hidden Histories and Usable Pasts at Northumbria. His research has considered the spatial politics of labour organising and more recently the histories of community responses to unemployment. This research has utilised both archival and oral history research methods. His work can be found in journals such as Antipode, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Political Geography, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, and Progress in Human Geography.
Cheryl McGeachan is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Glasgow. She specialises in the historical geographies of mental ill-health, including exploration of issues of crime, conflict, and incarceration. She has written extensively on doing historical geography, particularly through participatory and fragmentary perspectives. She teaches Historical Geographies of Care, Conflict and Confinement at the University of Glasgow and has supervised several historical geography PhD students. Her work can be found in journals such as Progress in Human Geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Journal of Historical Geography, and Area.
