Dave McLaughlin

I am a geographer of stories with an interest in Environmental Humanities. I completed an AHRC-funded PhD at Cambridge University in 2018. I am a book review editor at Social and Cultural Geography.

My research considers the role that stories, from traditional folklores to postdigital representations, play in the co-construction of selfhood and community in places where ontological boundaries (between reality and imagination; self and other; human and more-than-human) bend, blur and break. I have published in Literary Geographies, Social and Cultural Geography, cultural geographies, and Transfers, as well as edited collections published with Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan and Bristol University Press.

I recently published a book with University of Wales Press's Literary Geography: Theory and Practice series: Making the Literary-Geographical World of Sherlock Holmes: The Game is Afoot. It tells the story of the steady transformation of the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes from a ‘nostalgic country of the mind’ into a space which blurs the boundaries of actual and fictional. This transformation was driven by the collaborative, geographically-attuned reading practices of Sherlockians in the late-twentieth century. In telling this tale, it provides an explanation of the development and meaning of literary geography’s key theories and practices for lay and academic audiences. 

I teach on the following modules:

ENV-3002B Communicating Critical Environmental Topics

ENV-4017B Research and Data Skills

ENV-5051B Research Practice (MO)

ENV-5053A Geographical Perspectives

ENV-6021Y Independent Research Project (supervisor)

ENV-6032A Human Geography in the Anthropocene

ENV-7119Y Research Skills