Easter Term 2012

Professor Christine Milligan

Professor of Health and Social Geography, Division of Health Research, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Lancaster University

Christine's research interests are focused around three broad areas of enquiry: care and older people; therapeutic landscapes; voluntarism and social welfare. She is also Director of Lancaster University's Centre for Ageing Research and is associate editor of the International Journal of Health and Place.

Christine's current work around care and older people includes research with Age UK exploring the health and wellbeing benefits of the 'Men in Sheds' initiatives; work looking at the resource implications of male care-giving; and supporting older carers at end of life. She is also PI on an ESRC seminar series entitled: 'Opportunities, challenges & tensions: linking the ageing and disability rights agendas.' Her recently completed work in this area includes an EU FP7 Collaborative Project (EFORTT) on Ethical Frameworks for Telecare Technologies for Older People at Home; and developing a State of the Art on Ageing, Inclusion and the use of the Internet for the Nominet Trust.

Christine's work around Therapeutic Landscapes has included Forestry Commission funded studies including: 'Climbing trees and building dens: the extent to which a reduction in the availability of natural woodland play-spaces in childhood might impact on the mental well-being in young adulthood; and 'New pathways for health and well-being in Scotland: research to understand and overcome barriers to accessing woodlands; and a study, funded by the NHS, that examined the extent to which communal gardening on allotment sites and social activity may have a therapeutic effect on the health and mental well-being of older people. She was also involved in a NERC funded project that is concerned with the health impacts of growing your own fruit and vegetables.

Christine was also the principal investigator on a comparative ESRC funded research project that looked at shifts in voluntary activism in the UK and New Zealand. This work was concerned with the extent to which different social, historical and cultural contexts, within and across neo-liberal states impact on the development of voluntary activism in the sub-sectors of mental health and community safety.

She also has an interest in ethics in research and was the principal investigator on a 3 year ESRC Research Training Programme on Ethics and Ethical Practice in Social Science Research. For further details see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/researchethics/. She was also instrumental in developing the Faculty Committee on Ethics in Research and an ethics resource for use in departments across and an ethics web-site.

Christine's teaching interests have a particular emphasis on qualitative methods, health geography, theory and debate in health and medicine and ethics in research.