Professor Christine Milligan

Associate Dean for Postgraduate Studies

Research Interests

Christine Milligan joined the Division of Health Research in September 1999. Before coming to Lancaster, Christine held a teaching post in the Department of Geography at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Her postgraduate study and undergraduate education were also undertaken at Strathclyde, where she graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Geography and Politics.

Christine's research interests are focused around: voluntarism and social welfare; informal care-giving and older people; mental health; and therapeutic landscapes. She is associate editor of the International Journal of Health and Place, Chair of the Mid-Life and Older People's Health Task Group for the North West and Vice Chair of the RGS/IBG Health Geography Research Group.

Christine also has an interest in ethics in research and is the principal investigator on a 3 year ESRC Research Training Programme on Ethics and Ethical Practice in Social Science Research. For further details see the ESRC Research Training Programme pages here. She was also instrumental in developing the Faculty Committee on Ethics in Research and an ethics resource for use in departments across and an ethics web-site.

Christine is also a member of EFORTT, an EU FP7Collaborative Projecton Ethical Frameworks for Telecare Technologies for Older People at Home. The project involves four partner organisations from across the EU and follows on from an earlier EU FP5 network (Identifying trends in European Medical Space) that brought together and synthesised health related activity from 29 different academic institutions across the European Union. and FP6 SSA (MEDUSE) involving 5 partner institutions and whichactively brought together academics, clinicians, practioners and service users to discuss issues around three core health themes (new care technology; risk; and patient organisations).

Christine was the principal investigator on a comparative ESRC funded research project thatlooked at shifts in voluntary activism in the UK and New Zealand. This work was concerned with the extent to which different social, historical and cultural contexts, within and across neo-liberal states impact on the development of voluntary activism in the sub-sectors of mental health and community safety. Further details can be found at: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/placing-vol-activism/. She has also been involved in a NERC funded project that is concerned with the health impacts of growing your own fruit and vegetables.

Other recently completed research includes: a study of informal carer's experiences of the care transition in New Zealand; an evaluation of Thematic Healthy Living Centres for Age Concern; a Forestry Commission funded study looking at 'New Pathways for health and well-being in Scotland: research to understand and overcome barriers to accessing woodlands'; and a study, funded by the NHS, that examined the extent to which communal gardening on allotment sites and social activity can be shown to have a therapeutic effect on the health and mental well-being of older people.

Earlier research includes an ESRC funded study on Voluntarism, Social Welfare and the City. Using the theoretical concept of the 'shadow state', this project examined the range and diversity of welfare voluntarism across Glasgow, with the aim of illuminating how and why spatial inequity of voluntarism arises in relation to three key areas of social welfare (health, crime and criminal justice and black and ethnic minority issues). She was also involved in a study funded by the Forestry Commission that explored the extent to which a reduction in the availability of natural woodland play-spaces in childhood might impact on the mental well-being in young adulthood;

Christine's teaching interests have a particular emphasis on qualitative methods, health geography, theory and debate in health and medicine and ethics in research.