Amanda Bingley

As a retired cultural and health geographer I continue to have an ongoing interest in psychoanalytic geographies, innovative methodologies in creative arts, narrative research, sensory and ethnographic research. My research was informed by both psychotherapeutic theory and methods (in particular Object Relations Theory), in health and place work by Therapeutic Landscapes and Attention Restoration Theory. I have a background of many years experience in healthcare working in humanistic psychotherapy and homeopathic medicine. My research has covered areas of mental health and place including natural landscapes as working space, mental health and well-being in older people, effects of play space on mental health in young people, therapeutic landscapes, and in end of life care.

My research interests led to a number of research grants that broaden my methodological approach to working with people and their experience and perception of health and place across the lifecourse including end of life. This includes qualitative and narrative research with children on disaster, risk and resilience in a UK and EU wide context; young people, their mental health and use of woodland as greenspace; with older people in various contexts including the benefits of gardening, conservation volunteering, older men on the Men in Sheds Age UK programme and research with people with dementia. My most recent work is on the Art in Recovery projects with refugees.