Dr Sarah Bell
Senior Lecturer
Sarah.Bell@exeter.ac.uk
Peter Lanyon
Peter Lanyon Building, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Treliever Road, Penryn, Cornwall, TR10 9FE, UK
Overview
Dr Sarah Bell is a Senior Lecturer in Health Geography at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health (ECEHH). Sarah’s research focuses on the intersections between disability, wellbeing, social inequality and the diverse and changing environments encountered through the life course.
Sarah’s work is underpinned by a passion for qualitative methodological development, designing sensitive approaches that promote critical awareness of alternative ways of embodying, experiencing and interpreting diverse everyday geographies. These range from narrative and ‘geonarrative’ approaches to emplaced, in situ and mobile methods and arts-based approaches.
Much of Sarah’s research examines experiences of mental health, wellbeing, disability and social inclusion in and with diverse forms of ‘nature’ - from parks, gardens, woodlands, coast and countryside to the weather and seasons. Sarah’s collaborative work – funded primarily by the ESRC and AHRC – challenges ableist discourses around the benefits of nature for wellbeing. It also seeks to promote a culture change, affirming the creativity, strength and expertise of disabled people rather than reducing disability to an 'access need'. You can read more about this and related work online:
- Sensing Nature: www.sensing-nature.com
- The Unlocking Landscapes Network: https://www.unlockinglandscapes.uk/
- What ‘blue’ can do for you: https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/blue/
- Weathered Lives: https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/medical-humanities/our-research/projects/weathered-lives/
Sarah's research has also highlighted the need to complement growing moves to ‘connect’ people with nature in the name of 'health' with efforts to cope with and adapt to experiences of environmental degradation, loss and uncertainty in the face of our rapidly changing global climate.
Since 2019, Sarah has been co-designing an interdisciplinary programme of collaborative research to explore as-yet overlooked opportunities to foreground disability rights and knowledges in climate adaptation scholarship, policy and practice. Funded via a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Geography and the UKRI (under the UK government's Horizon Europe funding guarantee), Sarah started this exciting research in July 2023, and you can read a little more about it online via the Sensing Climate website.
Qualifications
- 2020 Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice and Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (University of Exeter)
- 2015 PhD (University of Exeter Medical School)
- 2007 MSc Practising Sustainable Development (Royal Holloway, University of London)
- 2006 BA Biological Sciences (Oxford University)
Research group links
Research
Research interests
Sarah’s main research interests include:
- Geographies of health, wellbeing, disability and social inequality;
- Disability-inclusive climate action and eco-ableism;
- More-than-human therapeutic landscape experiences.
Research projects
- 2023 - 2028: "IncluADAPT: Disability-inclusive climate adaptation", UKRI (via the UK government's Horizon Europe funding guarantee), PI.
- 2023 - 2026: Phillip Leverhulme Prize in Geography, 2022, PI.
- 2022: "What can blue do for you: a collaborative resource to share research findings and promote blue space engagement for people with severe mental illness", Closing the Gap Impact Accelerator Fund, Co-I.
- 2021 - 2022: "What does blue do for you? Experiences of blue spaces and health in the lives of people with severe mental illness", Closing the Gap Kick Starter Fund, Co-I.
- 2021 - 2026: "GroundsWell: Community-engaged and Data-informed Systems Transformation of Urban Green and Blue Space for Population Health", UK Prevention Research Partnership, Co-I.
- 2020 - 2022: "Re-Storying Landscape for Social Inclusion", ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA)-funded Strategic Initiative Award, PI.
- 2020 - 2022: "Unlocking Landscapes: History, Culture and Sensory Diversity in Landscape Use and Decision Making", AHRC-funded Research Networking Highlight Notice Award, Co-I.
- 2019-2020: "Living Well With Weather", Wellcome Trust Small Grant in Humanities and Social Sciences, Co-I
- 2018: "Nature Narratives: Vocalising Nature Sense", ESRC IAA-funded Project Co-Creation Award, PI
- 2017: "Nature Sense", ESRC IAA-funded Impact Cultivation Award, PI
- 2016-2018: "Sensing Nature", ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellowship, PI - www.sensing-nature.com.
Research networks
Royal Geographical Society Geographies of Health and Wellbeing Research Group (https://ghwrg.wordpress.com/)
Publications
Journal articles
Chapters
Conferences
Teaching
I co-lead our MSc Environment and Human Health programme, as well as a number of modules listed below. I enjoy teaching on a range of themes rooted within critical health and disability geography, including: therapeutic landscape encounters; geographies of mental health, wellbeing, ableism and disability; disability and environmental change; political ecologies of health; green/blue space and health; and environmental and climate justice. I also enjoy teaching research methods, with a particular focus on qualitative research approaches. I'm very happy to supervise undergraduate or postgraduate dissertations that fall within these fields.Modules
2023/24
- CSC2021 - Health, Place and Wellbeing
- HPDM083Z - Project Design
- HPDM164Z - Disability, Social Justice and Climate Resilient Development