ProfessorDavid Conradson

My work focuses on the creation and erosion of wellbeing in places. I have examined processes and events that contribute to lived experiences of distress and difficulty in a number of towns, cities and regions in New Zealand and the UK, while also working to identify the collaborations, policies and practices able to facilitate wellbeing within them. 

My early research considered rural and urban places disrupted by economic restructuring and neoliberal welfare reform, while more recent projects have focused on disaster-affected places. When examining these variously disrupted environments, I have investigated the spaces and settings within them that people experience as supportive, enabling and therapeutic and even, on occasion, as transformative. Empirical investigations in this regard have encompassed community drop-in centres, retreat centres, respite care agencies, residential care facilities, and urban community farms.  

I am currently an Associate Editor for Health & Place and the New Zealand Geographer, and an editorial board member for Social & Cultural Geography; Emotion, Space & Society; and the Australasian Journal of Disaster & Trauma Studies.