Critical Perspectives into Flow Research

Janet Banfield is a college lecturer in geography at Hertford College, the University of Oxford, but she also has one foot in psychology. She additionally teaches at St. Anne’s and St. Catherine’s colleges at the University of Oxford. Whether pedagogically, conceptually or empirically oriented, her ethos is to examine the assumptions and ideas of one discipline through the lens of the other. Her topical focus lies in cultural geography, exploring the creation and experience of place through cultural forms and activities, from artistic practice to puppetry. From a theoretical perspective, Janet works in ‘non-representational’ geography/psychology, which is concerned both with the work that representations do in the world (i.e., the difference that they make) and with the role of the non-representational (e.g., feelings, sensations, intuition) in the workings of the world. Her academic interests are practice-based and autoethnographic and are concerned as much with methodological and pedagogical innovation as with the generation of new empirical knowledge and conceptual frameworks. Working in interdisciplinary fashion, Janet seeks to advance the benefits of psychology by forging stronger connections with geography, and vice versa.

• Critical Geographies of Optimal Experience.- CONCEPTS AND MODELS.- Introduction to Part I A Diffuse Archipelago of Constructs.- The Componential Model and its Discontents.- Channel and Process Models of Flow .- Conclusion to Part I Bridging the archipelago.- ACTUAL AND VIRTUAL PLACES.- Problematising Place.- Actual Places.- Virtual Places.- Conclusion to Part II Flow as Place-Making.- MANIPULATIONS AND INTERVENTIONS.- Introduction to Part III Instrumentalising Flow.- Spaces of Flow Manipulation.- Flow Interventions in Place.- Conclusion to Part III Recrafting the Future of Flow.- Conclusion to Part III Recrafting the Future of Flow.- Conclusion: Hopeful Geographies of Optimal Experience.