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My research is situated within the literature looking at the processes of deinstitutionalisation of the mental health system through the lived geographies placed in between the walls of the asylum. It addresses mental health geographers' call for a situated knowledge about mental health and, by using the Italian psychiatric experience of the 1960s and 1970s as an example, stresses the importance of looking at care in both spatial and relational terms. Through a geographical understanding of the Italian psychiatric reform, that goes from Franco Basaglia's renowned work to the underrepresented experience of Turin, in northwest Italy, I will examine how space is intertwined with processes of mental health care. Additionally, I assess the role played by the interaction between spatial and relational elements in potentially enabling patients' self‐determination, empowerment and inclusion. The case of Turin—the story of which will be told through the analysis of archival material from a grassroots association called Associazione per la Lotta contro le Malattie Mentali—will serve to expand the common narrative around the Italian lesson and to give resonance to the instrumental role played at the time by both patients and civil society. By looking at the key events that led to the gradual dismantlement of the traditional psychiatric institutions in the metropolitan area of Turin, this paper contributes to the spatial turn in mental health studies, calling upon researchers to look at past achievements as something we still need to learn from and safeguard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the use of emancipatory research principles in archival research and contends with the suitability of academic conventions that characterise ethical practice when the research goal is to elevate the voices of marginalised historical groups. Drawing on a case study of Le Court Cheshire Home, England (1948–1975) to address a critical gap in the literature, I highlight some ethical dilemmas I encountered when working at the nexus of historical geography and geographies of disability. This paper demonstrates what an emancipatory research approach means for an archival study of disability, using examples to illustrate how ethical decisions impacted all stages of the research design and the write‐up of findings. I argue that ethics should not be envisaged solely as an approval process completed at the project's outset. Rather, the explorative nature of archival research necessitates that ethics should be an iterative undertaking, with archival sources having the potential to shape both the content and conduct of the research. The paper uses a case study of Le Court Cheshire Home to explore research ethics and the applicability of emancipatory research principles for an archival study of disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to their origins and purpose, institutional archives present us with a set of limits when we seek to use them in struggles against colonialism. Here we explore to what extent we can negotiate those limits and practice participatory historical research. In particular, we explore how our project's direction by Indigenous methodology, a Two‐Eyed Seeing approach, influenced our relationship with the colonial archive. The research reported on in this paper involved establishing a historical narrative from Canadian federal and provincial colonial archives. This narrative was used in conjunction with oral histories from and interviews with Elders and Knowledge‐holders of the Mi'kmaq Nation to document the emergence of social assistance policy as a central aspect of colonial processes. Our historical research was, thus, explicitly tied to understanding the Mi'kmaw struggle for sovereignty in the colonial present. Here we sketch out aspects of our attempt to navigate between the colonial past and colonial present using a participatory approach to the historical geographies of Indigenous–settler relations. This paper investigates the limitations, opportunities, and contradictions of using colonial archives for decolonial purposes. It does so through a case study of research conducted with the Mi'kmaq First Nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing trend across the social sciences to engage with archives. Within human geography, this has stimulated a debate about the nature of archives, including moving from considering 'archive as source' to 'archive as subject.' We build on and extend this thinking, suggesting that an even more active appreciation of the dynamic nature of relationships between researchers, owners of records, and archival material is needed. This paper draws on an interdisciplinary study of voluntary action and welfare provision in England in the 1940s and 2010s to highlight how the different iterative processes involved in collaborative archival research are part of what we call co‐curation. Co‐curation involves the negotiated identification, selection, preparation, and interpretation of archival materials. This has implications for both research processes and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Located on the redeveloping waterfront of Canada's largest city, the Toronto Music Garden is a unique public garden inspired by the first of J. S. Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. Designed through a collaboration with cellist Yo‐Yo Ma and landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy, the garden attempts not to represent Bach or his music but to inscribe its essence on the landscape. Several lines of inquiry are pursued in this paper. First, it provides an overview of the geographies of gardens and the ways in which elements of garden design and music composition have influenced each other. Second, it reveals the creative process involved in translating the elements of one art form (music) to another (landscape design). Especially important to this process is Messervy's use of what she terms 'archetypal' landforms. Third, the Music Garden is analysed as an integral part of the lived landscape of Toronto's post‐industrial waterfront. Finally, the paper contends that the power and significance of the Toronto Music Garden lies in the interstices between the emotional geographies that informed the design and the resulting affective atmosphere experienced by a diversity of visitors. The methodology for this project includes open‐ended interviews, fieldwork, and archival research. This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on the roles that the arts can play in the production and utilisation of distinctive public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the possibilities of examining undergraduate dissertations as sources. By means of archival research on a collection of Geography undergraduate dissertations at the University of Glasgow, comprising over 2,600 dissertations from 1954 to 2014, this paper argues for the epistemological value of both these "small" knowledge productions and the experiences of becoming a geographer for studying the history of Geography. A sustained study of the collection reveals that the dissertations comprise three kinds of sources: intellectual sources, seeing the dissertations as original pieces of academic research; cultural sources, examining the role of this "rites of passage" in becoming a geographer; and lastly, as social sources, whereby the dissertations illuminate a diverse, personal network within and beyond the university. The vastness of the archival collection of undergraduate Geography dissertations and the opportunities offered for a longitudinal examining of shifts within them over the years, revealing notable overall trends and traditions, ultimately discloses their own importance as exciting and striking original knowledge productions. This paper explores the possibilities of examining undergraduate Geography dissertations as intellectual sources, recognising the dissertations as original pieces of academic research; cultural sources, examining the role of this "rite of passage" in the experience of becoming a geographer; and lastly, as social sources, whereby the dissertations illuminate a diverse, personal network within and beyond the university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can ten weeks of archival research be considered a re‐enactment of the daily life of black African clerks who created the records? What would such a claim entail when it is made by a white female scholar? Drawing from my experience of archival research in Zambia, and from recent enthusiasm in historical geography for "enlivening" or "animating" the past, I analyse what parameters would be necessary for this re‐enactment to be considered a success. This paper explores how breaking up historical situations into units of gesture and experience affects the narrating of history. It asks what models of the self are implied by re‐enactive historical investigation; in relation to the agency of historical actors, and also to the performativity of their original gestures. It argues that performative investigation of the social and cultural geographies of the subaltern sits uncomfortably with current scholarly practices in historical geography. This is in part because that work is largely carried out by lone scholars, but also because of the highly individualised, self‐conscious and self‐possessed modes through which the outcomes of performative research are narrated. Finally, borrowing the term "acts of transfer" (from the performance scholar Diana Taylor), this paper proposes that this contemporary performance of clerical work is only one route through which the colonial past resonates, or acts, in the present. The lives of the colonial clerks were locked into structures of racial and socioeconomic inequality that survive outside my performance. Does "performing" the past overwrite or obscure these other continuities? To avoid such an erasure, both the ethical consequences and epistemological goals of performative research in historical geography need to be more clearly articulated in relationship to the sociomaterial geographies of the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precarious labour geography of shaping political left histories is raised in this paper to engage with and deepen accounts of the archive within geography and beyond. The focus of the paper is on the provision of radical history in Glasgow through two archive collections within the city. The analysis raises the politics of archival research practices and is positioned within a context of increasingly difficult economic circumstances for libraries, archives and museums. The insights emerging from interviews with archive representatives reveal multiple issues relating to the provision of usable pasts and asserts the continued importance of archives within places such as Glasgow. In this regard, the archive is positioned as a place of collaboration, labour and activism to suggest an alternative understanding of archival practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographical scholarship has rightly problematised the act of archival research, showing how the practice of archiving is not only concerned with how a society collectively remembers, but also forgets. As such, the dominant motif for discussing historical methods in geography has been through the lens of absence: the archive is a space of 'traces', 'fragments' and 'ghosts'. In this paper I suggest that the focus on incompleteness and partiality, while true, may also belie what many geographers working in archives find their greatest difficulty: an overwhelming volume of source materials. I reflect on my own research experiences in the pacifist archive to suggest that the growing scale and scope of many collections, along with the taxing research demands of transnational perspectives, pose immediate practical challenges for geographers characterised as much by abundance as by absence. In the second half of the paper, drawing on recent scholarship in history and geography, I argue that the method of biography offers one possible strategy for navigating archival abundance, allowing geographers to tell stories that are wider, deeper and more revealingly complex within the existing time and financial constraints of humanities research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I review approaches to absence in geography to argue that, while apprehending absence requires creative and varied approaches, actually tracing absence may demand traditional, methodical and time-intensive empirical research. Without undermining the value of novel methods or expanded understandings of the empirical, I demonstrate how sometimes only exhaustive empirical research (archival in this case) can address our research questions - as much as we may favour the new, sometimes we must rely on the methods that endure. To make this point I present my quest for evidence of the much-lauded first neon sign in the USA. The story of the 1922-3 Earle C. Anthony ' Packard' sign had not been questioned by print or Internet source - but neither had any primary evidence (such as photographs or media coverage) been presented of its existence. That lack of evidence became a six-month quest to trace the sign's absence, one that reveals how exhaustive archival research, utilising sources previously not consulted (or perhaps even known), could upset previous histories of neon signs in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we discuss our experience conducting ethnographic and archival research on illiberal processes within nominally liberal states - in this case, the USA. We focus on two different institutional practices based on our respective fieldwork: (1) counterinsurgency training of civilian and military personnel in Indiana for deployment in southern Afghanistan and (2) immigration enforcement, particularly immigrant family detention. Building on Koch's (2013, this issue) argument for conceptualising closed contexts over il/liberal dichotomies, we analyse how liberal norms of open information, documentation and archiving function as governmental technologies. We argue that immigration and military agencies are not best understood as intentional, conspiratorial agencies bent on obscurity; rather, we show how a range of state and non-state actors produce particular kinds of knowledge about US federal agency practices. By working through examples from our respective research projects, we show how seeking access to state agencies requires researchers' participation in the bounding of state and civil society. Rather than accept those boundaries, we argue that researchers in nominally liberal and illiberal states alike should pay close attention to how governmental technologies of openness and closure are woven together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]