Hayden Lorimer

An essay exploring the textured topography of the world-under-foot, by way of memories amassed during the lifelong habit of long-distance running. Diverse kinds of surfaces and slope are subject to scrutiny: not through any sort of systematic survey, but rather according to remembrances of matter, movement and the “thought-world” of physical effort. By these personal measures, the runner is configured as a sensualist whose feet are alive to the experience of difference and to sameness.

An essay exploring the textured topography of the world-under-foot, by way of memories amassed during the lifelong habit of long-distance running. Diverse kinds of surfaces and slope are subject to scrutiny: not through any sort of systematic survey, but rather according to remembrances of matter, movement and the “thought-world” of physical effort. By these personal measures, the runner is configured as a sensualist whose feet are alive to the experience of difference and to sameness.

... The sportsman as empire builder', he noted how '[t]he chase of the red deer had much to do with the spirit which stimulated ... The same qualities of stoicism, independence and valour which the imperial adventurer was felt to embody, were part of the big-game hunter's armoury. ...

This article is concerned with the narration of earth processes in stories of a younger world. It centres on A Land (1951), the most notable published work of Jaquetta Hawkes, archaeologist, prehistorian, writer and journalist. The land under examination is Britain, and its island story becomes her story too. The book unfolds as an unconventional geological history of regional scenery,

... as well, because we all lived really near each other in the East End [of Glasgow], and in my Aunt Nan's house there'd be Ella Fitzgerald and ... And my mum had taken it up to my grandma's, and all my aunties were round the table and playing it, saying, 'Drew did this?' I was about ...

In this article we touch upon the intimate bond between commuters that grows (or, sometimes, does not grow) in their daily wayfinding. The commuter's movement through the world, once established, is a steady back and forth along well-worn paths. Each day the commuters need to recall their way into work, and from time to time their ways change due to congestion, road building, other places they have to go by along the way, or even just whim. The Habitable Cars project that we present here has been concerned with people travelling together as families, friends and car-sharers. In this paper we will present two video clips where the route itself is manifest as the problem for the occupants of a car. Offering and taking shortcuts sustains and makes manifest our intimacy with a place.

Two seats and a small sofa all facing forwards. The three piece suite of the conventionally designed car. A little living room. It is supplied with a stereo for playing music and a radio. More commonly now, DVD players for the occupants of the sofa. No curtains. No coffee table. Not much in the way of shelves. No room to walk around; sitting is all there is on offer. A lot of windows though, and a lot of doors. The view from the windows changes pretty much constantly as does where you will alight if you leave by one of the doors. It is hard to write ...

The Centenary of Geography at the University of Glasgow has occasioned a gathering together of various materials that illuminate 100 years of teaching and researching the subject in this ancient seat of learning. Visits to the University Archives to recover the ‘official’ record from Court and Senate Minutes, and much else besides, have been supplemented by foraging through and in

This essay examines the development of a culture of outdoor activity in the Highlands of Scotland during the inter‐war period. With reference to recent work on imagined national narratives, an investigation is made of the struggle waged for recreative, moral and political control of this significant region. By focusing upon the role of the Scottish Youth Hostel Association (SYHA) the

Formal research training is integral to research degrees in human geography completed in UK higher education institutions today. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has been the driving force behind the formalization of research training. Arguably less well known among the ESRC research training recommendations is the stipulation that postgraduate research students complete advanced research training. This paper will draw upon the authors' experiences of the collaborative ESRC/Royal Scottish Geographical Society Advanced Research Training for Scottish Postgraduate Human Geographers. A detailed account of the advanced research training provision will be given, followed by staff and student reflections on the training. The paper concludes by considering what advanced research training offers to the PhD process and future developments in advanced research training.

This paper examines popular cultural constructions of the Scottish Highlands during the interwar period. Situating events within the literary and artistic context of the «Celtic Twilight», it traces the establishment, and subsequent links between, two pioneering «heritage» sites which used as their focus the «blackhouse», the vernacular form of habitation in the Highlands. These sites, created under the auspices of the National Trust for Scotland and the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition, are understood as «official» expressions of a romanticized, imaginary geography heavily reliant on ideas of cultural authenticity and marginality. By considering aspects of the «Self/Other» representational dialectic and placing in question popular constructions of peripherality the paper considers how such projects, ostensibly motivated by remembrance and preservation, were also a highly selective means of national identification. Ultimately, the work demonstrates how the modern impulse to differentiate between, and thereby classify, distinctive cultural traditions and forms of knowledge facilitated an obvious Highland bias in what subsequently became Scotland's accepted historiography.

This paper is an edited transcript of a panel discussion on 'Landscape, Mobility and Practice'which was held at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Annual Conference in September 2006. In the paper the panel engage with the work of geographers and others who have been drawing upon theories of practice to explore issues of mobility and how we encounter, apprehend, inhabit and move through landscapes. The contributors discuss the usefulness of conceptions of landscape vis-à-vis ...

Abstract. This paper reconstructs the historical geographies of a family holiday and field trip in 1952 to Glen Roy, Scotland, site of the famous Parallel Roads. The puzzle of the Parallel Roads' origin has generated a hefty literature over the years, much of it written by eminent ...

... influence of ideas of performance in cultural geography, there now seems a pressing need to be creative with practice in 'the real' and very familiar realm of fieldwork.6 In devising this project ... a direct instruction for the Lodge staff: 'Mend the potholes in the road, they provide ...

This paper considers alternative ways to approach teaching and researching the history and philosophy of geography. While exploring the geography department as a previously marginalized space in accounts of disciplinary change, three different types of source are identified: first, less formal kinds of documentation; second, material sites; and third, a bodily archive of action, gesture and movement. In combination, these are shown to open up new possibilities for localized, grass–roots versions of geography’s pasts and presents.

This article examines how the practice of learning geography, and the arenas in which knowledge-making takes place, can be usefully positioned within changing histories of the discipline. It contends that networks of action – understood through the intersection of social sites, subjects and sources – present a conceptual framework and narrative focus for the re-consideration of specific episodes from geography's past. The interventions made here are informed and illustrated by a ‘small story’ about the doing of geography. Based on different personal accounts, the story revives a series of events, encounters, dialogues and images dating back to the winter of 1951 at Glenmore Lodge, Scotland. This educational institution in the Cairngorm mountains offered children from urban areas the opportunity to learn field studies and the skills of ‘outdoor citizenship’. Initially, the focus falls on Margaret Jack, a 14-year-old field-course participant. Her learning experiences are traced through personal letters, a diary and a field journal dating from that time, and her recent recollections of this event. Margaret's account dovetails with the story of her field studies instructor, Robin Murray. Robin's role is traced through his learning experiences as a geography undergraduate at Aberdeen University, and the recent recollections of Catriona Murray, his wife.

... Unpublished dissertation presented for the Master of Arts in Landscape and Culture, School of Geography, University of Nottingham. Crang, M. 2003: Qualitative methods: touchy, feely, look-see? Progress in Human Geography 27, 494–504. ...