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Avril Maddrell

Photograph of Avril Maddrell
  • Undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and supervision
  • SAGES Research Ethics Committee
  • Member of SAGES Equality and Diversity committee

Areas of interest

Avril is a social and cultural geographer interested in historical and contemporary issues.

Research interests include:

  • gender
  • emotional-affective geographies
  • deathscapes
  • sacred mobilities
  • place, landscape and heritage
  • historiography
  • charity shops as socio-cultural spaces.

Postgraduate supervision

PhD supervision:

  • Robyn Woronka,‘All characters and events depicted in the film are fictitious; the places are real’.   To what extent does Yesterday’s (2019) depiction of Lowestoft, East Suffolk reflect the local community’s perception of their sense of place?
  • Dornelles (2020) Gendered geographies of online gaming: a UK/Brazil comparative case study of gendered spatial practices in the MOBA League of Legends.
  • Kirkpatrick (2016) Landscape, mourning and remembrance: performance art and practice
  • Wigley (2015) Everyday mobilities, place and spiritual practice
  • Pardoel (2015) Landscape, place and dwelling: transhumance and processions in Spain
  • Cope (2015) Visitor experience of sense of place at the National Trust
  • Evans (2014) Terra Incognita: women in the RGS expedition archives (AHRC CDA)
  • Ruston (2012) Discourses of authenticity and Travellers' rights to accommodation

Avril welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students working in her field.

Research centres and groups

Human Geography Research Cluster

Research projects

Current project:

2019-22 Humanities in European Research Area (HERA), Project Leader: Cemeteries and Crematoria as public spaces of belonging in Europe: a study of migrant and minority cultural inclusion, exclusion and integration (CeMi) with an interdisciplinary team of 11 colleagues from 6 EU countries  

Recent research projects:

  • 2017–18 Deathscapes and Diversity in multicultural England and Wales. Making space for established minorities' and migrants' bodily remains and associated ritual and remembrance, with Yasminah Beebeejaun (UCL), Katie McClymont (UWE) (PI, AHRC-ESRC)
  • 2015–16 'Creating a virtual pilgrimage trail in the Isle of Man: faithscape, landscape and heritage' (PI, AHRC Follow on funding: AH/N00289X/1)
  • 2015–16 Economic Migrants in Bristol, (PI, Research Consultancy Project, Bristol City Council)
  • 2012 Higher Education Academy, Gender and Career Experience in Geography (with RGS-IBG WGSG)
  • 2010–11, Landscape aesthetics, meaning and experience in Christian pilgrimage, (PI, with Veronica della Dora (Geography, Bristol); Alessandro Scafi, (Warburg Inst., London); Heather Walton (Theology, Glasgow) AHRC-ESRC : HOO9868/1)

Professional bodies/affiliations

Co-Editor:

  • Gender, Place and Culture
  • Social and Cultural Geography

Books

  • Gemzöe, L., Keinänen, M. and Maddrell A. (eds.), (2016) Contemporary Encounters in Gender and Religion. European perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan, London.
  • Maddrell, A. Terry A. and Gale T. (eds.) (2015) Sacred Mobilities, Ashgate, Farnham
  • Maddrell A., Della Dora V., Scafi A. and Walton H. (2015) Christian pilgrimage, landscape and heritage. Journeying to the sacred, Routledge, London
  • Maddrell A. and J. Sidaway (eds.) (2010) Deathscapes. New spaces for death, dying and bereavement, Ashgate, Farnham.
  • Anderson E., A. Maddrell, K. McLouglin and E. Vincent (eds.) (2010) Memory, Mourning, Landscape, Rodopi, Amsterdam
  • Maddrell A. (2009) Complex Locations: women's geographical work in the UK 1850-1970, Royal Geographical Society - Institute of British Geographers/ Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester.
  • Horne S. and A. Maddrell, (2002) Charity Shops. Retailing, consumption and society, Routledge, London.

Publications

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