This thesis explores the interaction between well-being and environmental volunteering. Focusing on five case study groups across Scotland, the emotional, social and physical well-being impacts of active environmental volunteer work are examined. Through an extensive ethnographic approach incorporating in-depth interviewing, participant observation and focus group work the thesis highlights the importance of studying the initial and continuing motivations for individuals to participate in environmental volunteering. This retains a particular focus on emotional and embodied volunteer experiences, exploring the importance of tasks and landscapes on the volunteering encounters. In considering the meaning of volunteering, the thesis also explores linkages of community and citizenship and how individuals frame and understand their volunteering, especially in relation to the environmental aspects of the work. This speaks directly to academic themes of embodiment, human-nature interactions, emotional geographies and social capital. The studentship was an ESRC-CASE funded project, with the CASE partner being Forestry Commission Scotland. The research takes place within a dynamic political context that encompasses current research and work on volunteering and natural environment encounters within Scotland and the UK as a whole. The thesis looks to inform ongoing policy relevant debates on environmental volunteering within both the Forestry Commission Scotland and the Scottish Government.

Emotions remain notably underexplored in both criminology and prisons research. This thesis sets out to address this problem by centralizing the importance of emotions in prison: especially the way prisoners express and regulate their affective states. To collect the data, 25 male and 25 female prisoners were 'shadowed', observed and interviewed across two prisons (HMP Send and HMP Ranby). Based on these findings, this thesis describes the emotional world of prisoners and their various 'affective' strategies. The three substantive chapters reveal the textured layers and various emotional states experienced by prisoners: first, at the level of the self (psychological); second, as existing between groups (social emotions); and, third, in relation to the physical environment (spatial). An individual substantive chapter is dedicated to each of these three levels of analysis. A primary finding was the prevalence of a wide range of 'emotion management' strategies among prisoners. One such strategy was emotion suppression, which was extremely salient among both men and women. While this emotion suppression was, in part, a product of pre-prison experiences it was also strongly influenced by institutional practices. Importantly, there was a strong correlation between prisoners who suppressed emotions and who were subsequently involved in violence (towards others, or inflicted upon themselves). A second key finding was the wide range of emotions that exist within, and are shaped by, different prison spaces-previous accounts have described prison as emotionally sterile, or characterised by anxiety and fear but this study develops the idea that prisons have an 'emotional geography' or affective 'map'. The study findings have implications for the 'emotional survivability' of our prisons; the need to open legitimate channels for emotional expression; and designing prisoners that are supportive, safe and secure establishments for prisoners to live in.

My research focuses on the emotional experience of the unearthing of ancestral bones for local Māori of Matata. The coastal town of Matata in the Eastern Bay of Plenty provides a central case study location as it is a town that is facing the pressure of coastal residential development as well the added strain of dealing with the 2005 flood which has compounded issues over local waahi tapu. Local iwi have continued to actively advocate for the protection of these sites especially with regard to the ongoing discovery of ancestral bones. Cultural and emotional geographies provide the theoretical framework for this research. This framework has been particularly useful as it encourages reflexive commentary and alternative ways of approaching and thinking about, and understanding knowledge. I have incorporated the research paradigm of kaupapa Māori which complements my theoretical framework by producing a research design that is organised and shaped according to tikanga Māori while (in) advertently critiquing and challenging traditional ways of conducting research. The overall aim is to explore the current issues surrounding the discovery of ancestral bones through korero with local iwi members. It is through their perspectives, stories, beliefs and opinions that provide a better understanding of the meanings attributed to waahi tapu and the influence of certain events such as the 2005 flood. I examine, critically the relationship between power, sacred sites, bones and the body. It is from these objectives that I contribute to an area of scholarship that has been largely left out from geographical enquiry. I suggest that the importance of sacredness and spirituality has been relatively overlooked as an influential factor in people's perceptions of the world around them. This thesis is intended to demonstrate the value of indigenous perspectives of bones, the body and sacredness as a way of better understanding some of the complexities that can arise when cross-cultural approaches collide in environmental planning. There are three main themes that have emerged from this research. The first theme has to do with competing knowledges. To Māori, the location and knowledge of ancestral bones is culturally important and is in its self sacred, therefore certain tikanga is applied as a means of a protection mechanism. However this ideologically clashes with traditional scientific western approaches which are privileged over other alternative ways of understanding knowledge, in this case Māori knowledge. The second related theme concerns the process of boundary making and cross-cultural ways of perceiving 'sacred' and 'everyday' spaces. To better understand these perspectives involves acknowledging the embodied and emotional experience of wāhi tapu to Māori, and the active role of kaitiaki in the protection and careful management of these culturally important spaces.

This thesis sets out to explore how immigrant women encounter urban green spaces in Istanbul and Stockholm in their everyday lives. Underlying this focus is the importance of urban green spaces’ in providing a sustainable future and a healthy life for all and inequalities in accessing these spaces. Considering a lack of focus on gender and power dynamics in the environmental perception studies and urban green spaces, this thesis inductively explores how women encounter and experience urban green spaces and how power shapes these experiences by adopting a feminist epistemology and methodology through the use of in-depth interviews and qualitative GIS. Using Google Earth as a qualitative GIS method allows for non-verbal expressions to come forward during the interviews and creates a more collaborative and inclusive research process in line with a feminist methodology adopted in this thesis. My findings further contribute to how to practically design inclusive urban green spaces. The findings show that the cultural and gendered constructions of urban green spaces shape how these spaces were experienced by the women participants. The findings also show that body is an important source of knowledge in understanding how women encounter and experience these spaces. Through understanding the role of gender and culture in shaping these spaces and hence the experiences, my findings contribute to scholarship on the accessibility of urban green spaces. How my research participants experience green spaces in the case study locations highlighted the need to understand accessibility beyond physical proximity

With a tense political landscape with stigmatizing discourse about migrants and so-called migrant ghettos, alongside continuous indications of gender imbalances in public spaces in Copenhagen, a focus on migrant women was chosen. The thesis takes its outset in a photo project conducted in Kringlebakken, an integration house in Copenhagen. Six migrant women participated and were asked to photograph the city through their eyes, meaning taking photos of their everyday lives and places they wanted to show and talk about in the following photo elicitation interviews. With agency and empowerment as key values the women navigated the conversation and shared experiences about their everyday lives. Concepts of intersectionality, the everyday and emotional geographies were applied through a feminist lens, highlighting the role emotions play in shaping our perception of spaces. From an inductive approach two themes were found: 1) green spaces and 2) everyday practices and challenges. The women shared peaceful moments and embodied experiences in nature both with themselves, with their children and their family. The green spaces evoked gratitude, appreciation and peace and had a general restorative effect in their everyday life. Their appreciation mainly stems from previous experiences in their home countries where urban green areas are not as accessible. Furthermore green spaces become a space where the women can get a break from the everyday chores. In contrast, the experiences shared about the everyday spaces and practices included language barriers, discrimination and feelings of exclusion. The added hindrances to urban life brings a level of discomfort in their everyday lives and it is here that Kringlebakken plays an essential role as an inclusive space in the women’s lives. Highlighting these embodied experiences adds nuances to a heterogeneous group that is often depicted as a homogeneous group.

This thesis explores the opportunities, challenges, and initiatives for coffee tourism in the context of Ethiopia. My research addresses five themes to achieve its research aims, which are as follows: arriving at prospective coffee tourism frameworks; addressing the reasons behind the underdevelopment of coffee tourism in Ethiopia; highlighting coffee tourism’s opportunities and challenges in Ethiopia; identifying potential coffee tourists, and; initiating coffee tourism through local collaborations. The core research methodologies are: fieldwork in Ethiopia involving a series of interviews with key stakeholders and a detailed case study of one potential coffee tourism region; digital ethnography, and; knowledge transfer activities enabled by several conceptual approaches such as development in Africa, power relations, reformed orientalism, situated knowledge, self-other, emotional geographies, and participatory geographies. Through this research, I found that coffee tourism cannot simply be a combination of coffee and tourism; coffee tourism needs to be understood through various contexts in addition to that of tourism; coffee tourism can be a more practical tourism form and a new coffee marketing vehicle in Ethiopia, and; coffee tourism potentially brings more advantages to the coffee industry in coffee bean exporting countries with current sustainable coffee initiatives such as fair trade or other coffee certification projects. Coffee tourism is not widely discussed in academia, and I argue that this research addresses several gaps in the literature: suggestions for coffee tourism frameworks, coffee tourism research in the context of Ethiopia, coffee tourism research beyond simple analysis in terms of the tourism or coffee industries, and a new illumination on Ethiopian culture, tourism, and coffee culture. Raising the topic of South Korea’s impact in Ethiopia as well as the East Asian role in coffee tourism is also an important contribution to academia. During my PhD tenure, I found a potential global partnership between coffee bean exporting countries and coffee bean importing countries through coffee. Ethiopia is an ideal place for coffee tourism, and it is my hope that coffee tourism could present an approach that brings to light Ethiopia's cultural wealth.

In den wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen der Mathematik, Physik, Philosophie, Geschichte und der Geografie ist der Raum sowohl als Untersuchungsgegenstand als auch als Analyseinstrument von zentralem Interesse. Er kann als soziales Phänomen und Produkt sozialer Praktiken und Handlungen gelten. Theoretische Annahmen solcher Art qualifizieren Raum als analytische Kategorie und sorgen für seine Anschlussfähigkeit an die Geschlechterdifferenzierungsforschung sowie die Gender und Queer Studies. In den Fokus gerät dabei die Interdependenz von Raum- und Geschlechterordnungen.