“A kind message or caring gesture can go a long way. We can all help reduce the stigma for those impacted by suicide.” UW’s Forefront Suicide Prevention.
“(A)nxiety is generally on the rise among academic faculty members . . . this rise in anxiety must be seen, in part at least, as the result of the neoliberalization of the university, whereby use value is being shifted to exchange value through competition manifest in particular systems of audit and assessment that underpin it.” (Berg, Gutzon Larsen, and Huijbens, 2016:11).
Committee Members
- Teddy Davenport
- Kim England
- Soohyung Hur
Agenda
In the 2018-19 year the committee decided to focus was on mental health. Discussions among us pointed to an uptick in anxiety and mental health issues among both graduate students and faculty. Kim has been a member of the AAG Task Force on the Status of Mental Health in Geography, since 2013. This Task Force had been gathering materials and making the case for more attention to be paid to concerns around mental wellness among geographers as well as a research topic in geography.
Fall Quarter 2018
Friday 5th October: We had a ‘mental health break’ by going on field trip to the Union Bay Natural Area near campus.
Friday 26th October: We organized a suicide prevention training workshop ran by a member of UW's Forefront Suicide Prevention Center (housed in the School of Social Work) - for more information visit Forefront.
Winter Quarter 2019
Paused due to the department hiring process for two colleagues.
Spring Quarter 2019
Friday 12th April: The Diversity Committee Lecture: Lawrence Berg (Professor of Critical Geography, University of British Columbia-Okanagan)
"Producing Anxiety in the Neoliberal University"
Professor Berg discussed the processes of the neoliberalization of the academy and the resultant shift towards competition and deepening inequalities in universities. It particular he addressed how these shifts produce unhealthy levels of anxiety and stress of anxiety among faculty and students.
Additional Resources:
Campus resources (and more) available at Forefront Suicide Prevention.
Berg, L.D., H. Gutzon Larsen, and E. Huijbens (2016) “Producing Anxiety in the Neoliberal University” In Towards an Ethic of Wellness in Geography (guested edited by L. Peake, B. Mullings and K. Parizeau), The Canadian Geographer/Le geographe canadien. 60(2): 168-180.
Berg, L.D. (2019) “Academic knowledge production, neoliberalization, and the falling rate of use values in the academy” Fennia: International Journal of Geography. 197(2): 177-78 & 181-182.
AAG Mental Health in the Academy Affinity Group