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Abstract: In this paper we consider the potential of autobiographical narratives for accessing ‘storied knowledge’ in research around geographies of health voluntarism. We firstly consider what is meant by elicited autobiography and how the narrative approach has been used in research more broadly. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken in Manchester, UK and Auckland, New Zealand we then demonstrate how this approach has helped us to map out and unpack the career journeys of mental health activists working within and across the voluntary and statutory sectors. Through our autobiographical narratives we illustrate how this approach has enabled us to elicit important insights into the triggers and trajectories underpinning mental health activism and how events and moments in time have provided critical junctures in these trajectories. We consider places as sites of significance in activist career paths; and as central to the researcher-participant gestalt within which the autobiography is elicited and recounted. The autobiographical process, we suggest, offers reflective insights into mental health activism that might not otherwise be gained using more conventional methodologies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

When investigating older people, human geographers have been almost exclusively concerned with distributive features or experiences of ageing, the latter often in relation to residential and caring environments. From both healthcare and welfare perspectives, these fields of research are extremely important. Notwithstanding, in an attempt to broaden geography's current engagement with older people, we argue for attention to be paid to older people's pasts through their oral histories; hence focusing on when they were younger as a means to explore and understand past social life. As a case study, we interviewed twelve older persons on their experiences of life in the English coastal town of Teignmouth during World War II. The data indicate how older people are not only located in local histories and the making of places, but also how the histories of places—from bricks and mortar to social and cultural dimensions—are equally located in their narratives. Indeed, rich, remarkable and often neglected modern oral histories of everyday social life are ‘there for the telling’, histories not captured by other methods and approaches. We argue that although a wide range of positional, theoretical and methodological issues require discussion, geographers might move beyond our case study to consider older people more frequently in their historical representations of social life, place and landscape. Such a project might unite historical and social geography in a new direction and provide unique viewing platforms onto existing debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During recent years, health geography has focused increasingly on how people's experiences of health and places are interrelated. This has included historical research on a variety of well-known places and remarkable events. In contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to how health and health care can be influential historically to the development, image and identity of `everyday' and ordinary places. We focus on the case of a small town in Southern England to demonstrate the long and diverse historical connections that exist between health and such places. Using both historical documents and local literature, the paper reviews early invasions and incursions, epidemics of infectious disease, the development of a therapeutic seaside resort, the impacts of the Second World War, and more recent social and economic developments associated with an ageing population. Complex and diverse health-related histories are shown to be interwoven with local and extra-local histories including those of national or international significance. We argue that health histories can be integral to shaping the past and present of places and our broader understandings and interpretations of them. From a disciplinary perspective, we contend that by adopting theoretical perspectives from cultural geography, an enhanced historical geography of health could disentangle these historical strands, tell these important stories and put everyday health histories in their place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]