Practising Human Geography

Ian is a cultural geographer with longstanding interests in material geographies, multi-sited ethnographic research, connective aesthetics and critical pedagogy. He combines these in/as 'follow the thing' work. In recent years he has added to these interests new media ecology and commodity activism, after experimenting with blogging as a means to write collaboratively about the geographies of food, and with web design to create followthethings.com, a spoof online shop, resource, database and fieldsite stocked with provocative 'follow the thing' work by academics, students, filmmakers, artists, journalists and others. Within Geography at Exeter, Ian is Director of Communications and External Relations and Equality and Diversity rep. Ian is also the cultural geography editor of Geography Compass and serves on the editorial boards of Qualitative Research and Geography. He is an Associate of the Social Sculpture Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University, an academic advisory board member of Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, and a trustee of the Geographical Association. Ian often writes as 'Ian Cook et al' in order to acknowledge the collaborative nature of all of his work. Career Ian graduated from UCL in 1986 with a BSc in Human Sciences, from the University of Kentucky in 1992 with an MA in Human Geography, and from the University of Bristol in 1997 with a PhD in Human Geography. He began his academic career at the University of Wales, Lampeter (1993-9), then worked at the University of Birmingham (1999-2007), before moving to Exeter in August 2007. My ongoing research interests concern the historical, cultural and rural geographies of mental ill-health, supplemented by scholarship in the following fields as well: social geographies of 'outsiders'; children's geographies; new animal geographies; historical and contemporary figurations of public space; Foucauldian studies; the history, historiography and theoretical development of geography. I have recently brought together much of my historical research on 'madness' and asylums in a substantial book-length treatment: Philo, C. 2004. A Geographical History of Institutional Provison for the Insane from Medieval Times to the 1860s in England and Wales: The Space Reserved for Insanity. Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston and Queenston, USA, and Lampeter, Wales UK (712 pages). I gained a Degree in Geography from the University of Cambridge in 1983, and a PhD from the same institution in 1992 (yes, it took me a while!). I was a PhD student and then a Research Fellow in Cambridge from 1983 to 1989, and then my first lecturing post was in the Department of Geography at the University of Wales, Lampeter, starting in January 1989. I was appointed to a Chair in Geography at the University of Glasgow in 1995, starting in October that year, and it has been my pleasure to research and teach at this institution ever since. From April 2002 to July 2005, I was Head of the Department (of Geography and Geomatics). From 1st August 2005, I have gone back into 'the ranks'. From January 2005, I have been enlisted to the Geography and Environmental Studies RAE Sub-Panel.