Abstract
Fieldwork is central to the identity, culture and history of academic Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES). However, in this paper we recognise that, for many academic staff, fieldtrips can be a profoundly challenging “ordeal,” ill‐conducive to wellness or effective pedagogic practice. Drawing on research with 39 UK university‐based GEES academics who self‐identify as having a mental health condition, we explore how mental health intersects with spaces and expectations of fieldwork in Higher Education. We particularly focus on their accounts of undertaking undergraduate residential fieldtrips and give voice to these largely undisclosed experiences. Their narratives run counter to normative, romanticised celebrations of fieldwork within GEES disciplines. We particularly highlight recurrent experiences of avoiding fieldwork, fieldwork‐as‐ ordeal, and “coping” with fieldwork, and suggest that commonplace anxieties within the neoliberal academy – about performance, productivity, fitness‐to‐work, self‐presentation, scrutiny and fear‐of‐falling‐behind – are felt particularly intensely during fieldwork. In spite of considerable work to make fieldwork more accessible to students, we find that field‐based teaching is experienced as a focal site of distress, anxiety and ordeal for many GEES academics with common mental health conditions. We conclude with prompts for reflection about how fieldwork could be otherwise.
Highlights
Fieldwork and fieldtrips are central to the identity, culture and history of academic Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES)
Drawing on research with 39 UK university-based GEES academics who self-identify as having a mental health condition, we explore how mental wellness intersects with spaces and expectations of residential fieldwork in Higher Education
I no longer have responsibility for any fieldwork. Being relieved of these duties was simultaneously a source of great relief and great sadness. (Geographer, depression [episodic]). These data suggest that taken-for-granted fieldwork practices produce exclusionary effects and experiences for many GEES academics with common mental health conditions
Summary
Fieldwork and fieldtrips are central to the identity, culture and history of academic Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES). Drawing on research with 39 UK university-based GEES academics who self-identify as having a mental health condition, we explore how mental wellness intersects with spaces and expectations of residential fieldwork in Higher Education. That many studies of (un)wellness in the neoliberal academy highlight experiences of considerable unease and unhappiness occasioned by “covering-up” mental ill-health in the workplace as individuals seek to “pass” as normatively-able (England, 2016; Price et al, 2017) and adopt enclosive, non-disclosive tactics in relation to their conditions and needs (Horton & Tucker, 2014). For reasons that will become sadly – at times painfully – clear, we highlight the fieldwork experiences of GEES academics who self-identify as having mental health conditions Their shared – but lived-in-isolation – experiences of fieldwork-as-ordeal stand in marked contrast to the celebration of fieldwork as an essential, affirmative activity within their disciplines. For many GEES academics, fieldwork is experienced as a deeply challenging obligation in which the anxieties and unwellness of the neoliberal academy are intensely experienced
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