Emotional Geographies and the Study of Education Spaces

Abstract

Both emotion (and affect) and education have become important topics for disciplinary human geographers over the past decade. Simultaneously, a ‘spatial turn’ has been observed in the broader social sciences that has inflected research on emotion and education. This chapter—written from the perspective of a human geographer—examines the implications of such a turn for studying emotion in education. It begins by outlining how geographers have theorised emotion and affect, noting productive tensions between these two terms. Thereafter, it reviews—through four examples—how emotional geographies have inflected research on education. In so doing, it raises a series of conceptual questions that should underpin the planning of research on education and emotions—especially about the ways in which space ‘matters’ to a particular educational practice.