Access to Healthcare for Female-to-Male Transgender Individuals in the UK: A Study of Treatment Geographies

This application is fuelled by my desire to engage with an area of geography that is underrepresented and to conduct research on topics with little-to-no available literature. By concentrating on transgender geographies, I wish to detail the challenges that this significant minority population face on a daily basis and fulfil an absence in academic literature that sheds light on the real and lived experiences of transgender individuals. This research will not only serve the field of geography but will also overlap into other disciplines, such as sociology, by investigating the interactions between transgender individuals and places within a multi-level structure ranging from a national to an interpersonal level. Through the concept of 'treatment geographies' this project will examine how access to healthcare and treatment is varied nationally through the availability of clinics, funding and the provision of private healthcare. The accumulation of barriers in the process of receiving treatment has resulted in a prevalence of private healthcare clinics, although these have resulted in geographical inertia forming a 'transhub' in London. The uneven landscape of service provision has not been systematically 'mapped', and this is a significant gap in literature I hope to fulfil.