Well - being and Place
An International Conference
7th - 9th April 2009
Durham, United Kingdom
Keynote Speakers:
Nic Marks (New Economics Foundation)
Professor Tim Blackman (Wolfson Research Institute, Durham University)
Over the last ten years the targets
of policy have expanded beyond the purely material and economic to embrace more
subjective dimensions of human flourishing. Amongst a range of terms that have
entered policy debates, ‘well-being’ has perhaps gained the greatest currency,
incorporating both physical and cognitive elements and applied across individual
and collective scales of analysis.
It is clear that the definition, experience and
determinants of well-being will vary in different kinds of places. However,
the complex ways in which place and well-being interact remain relatively under-researched
and under-theorised.
This conference will draw together research that
explicitly links well-being and place. It will advance knowledge and stimulate
future directions that are both creative intellectually and timely for contemporary
policy debates. The organisers would like to include research from a range of
different scales of analysis, across different substantive domains and from
both policy-linked and more explorative approaches. The concept of place can
be interpreted broadly from geographical locations (urban, rural, city, nation),
everyday settings (home, work, school, street, leisure centres) and different
scales (individual to international).
We welcome contributions from the academic and
policy communities that focus on the relationship between well-being and place,
broadly defined. The themes for the sessions will include:
- Theory, methods and ethics
of well-being
- Transitions: well-being across
this life course and the next
- Therapeutic places and unhealthy
spaces
- Busy with a purpose; the importance
of doing nothing
- Well-being in motion: flows,
networks, relations
Organised and hosted
by:
The Centre for the Study
of Cities & Regions and the Social
Wellbeing and Spatial Justice research cluster of
the Department of
Geography at Durham University working in collaboration with the University’s
Wolfson Research
Institute
Organisers:
Joe Painter, Sarah Atkinson, Beverley Searle and Sara Fuller
For further information,
please contact Sara Fuller