A Geography of Shame: Cultural Geographies of Moving Shame through Embodied Creative Practice

This project develops a geography of shame by bringing cultural geography into conversation with interdisciplinary shame research. While shame is widely recognised as a relational, embodied, and spatial phenomenon across psychology, philosophy, and sociology, geography has yet to develop a comprehensive account of it. This PhD addresses that gap by using embodied creative practices-including yoga, body-mapping, and dance movement psychotherapy-to explore how shame affects embodied experience.
Methodologically, the research tackles the challenge of researching shame, an experience that is often ineffable, non-verbal, and felt before it is consciously known. Building on feminist and nonrepresentational geographies of the body, this project introduces Moving Shame, an innovative research framework that facilitates the recognition and articulation of feelings of shame that are otherwise internalised, somaticised, or hidden.
Using an engaged, autoethnographic approach, the research examines how embodied creative practices can serve as both a method of inquiry and a potential medium for healing from shame. The study explores the relational dynamics of shame, the ways it circulates through bodies and spaces, and the role of embodied methodologies as a relational medium in shame research. Ultimately, this research argues for a greater integration of embodied creative methodologies in shame studies, expanding both academic and therapeutic understandings of shame's impact on individual and collective wellbeing. When facilitated with care, particularly through trauma-informed approaches, these practices have potential to not only open up new understandings of shame that will contribute to shame scholarship, but also to cultivate healing and growth for both participants and researchers.