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The COVID‐19 pandemic somewhat unexpectedly promoted resurgent interest in the attractions of rural places, not least associated with nature, in many countries for especially urban people. The paper argues that this link was very fecund for many within the broad UK ‘folk music’ community specifically. After introducing COVID‐19's pro‐rural turn, the paper gives a brief overview of now substantial music geography scholarship, paying particular attention to what has been studied in respect of folk music, not least its examination of the latter's problematic links to English identities. It argues that folk music's resurgent rural links call for attention. It then introduces how the rural‐folk music COVID‐19 experience worked at three non‐exclusive levels. First, there was rural influence on the music being produced. Second, some musicians were also personally impacted strongly by rural experiences, evident not solely through their music. Third, some musicians developed original rural initiatives that saw audience members also gaining direct rural inspiration, not just via the strong growth in internet‐facilitated connections but through direct in‐place encounters with the musicians in the rural. Each reading is illustrated by two brief case studies, with the rural‐folk combination becoming increasingly alive and more‐than‐representational. It is suggested in conclusion that there remains a strong ‘life’ to these rural‐folk music connections in less predominant COVID‐19 times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimalist fashion has become a key element of the wider minimalist movement that promotes reducing one's wardrobe space to a bare minimum of essential items (or a 'capsule wardrobe') with few, quality items that coordinate. Minimalist‐inspired 'fashion challenges', in which participants are challenged to only wear a certain number of garments over a certain time period, have also gained increasing momentum, particularly in the USA and the UK. This study considers 'Project 333' (in which participants must only wear 33 items of clothes over a three‐month period), and the 'Six Items Challenge' (which requires participants to only wear six garments over 6 weeks), to explore their potential to encourage sustainable fashion (non‐)consumption. This is achieved via an analysis of 20 blog posts of individuals reflecting on their own participation in the two challenges and an auto‐ethnography of my own participation in the Six Items Challenge. The research reveals that while just over half of participants mentioned sustainability as a motivation or outcome of their participation in a fashion challenge, the challenges' focus on garment reduction, re‐use, repair, and not shopping while partaking in them, renders them sustainability driven in practice. Almost all challenges also mentioned personal benefits of conducting a fashion challenge (such as money and time saved plus greater fashion creativity), which could be seen as a helpful way in which to encourage their uptake. However, the paper also considers the idealisation of 'perfect' minimalist wardrobe spaces and subsequent fashioned identities and issues regarding who has the pecuniary means to embrace the quality over quantity narrative of the challenges. The paper therefore concludes that fashion challenges do have the potential to encourage more sustainable fashion practices, but they simultaneously raise tensions regarding idealised minimalist fashioned identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an affective framework, this article explores the role of shame in stimulating non‐migrant citizen solidarity with asylum seekers and refugees across the UK. Combining research on shame with ongoing discussions of solidarity and influential work by Bourdieu, the productive potential of affect is discussed. This paper argues that shame is an affect capable of creating a 'rupture' in an individual or organisation's habitus. This rupture is evidenced as resulting in structural change in the organisations as they reckon with actions that fall into structures of racial domination. Findings from 15 research interviews with active individuals in migrant justice organisations are analysed in relation to shame and solidarity. Data is from a wider project, utilising participatory methods alongside in‐depth interviews looking to understand the work of organisations supporting asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. This paper develops the burgeoning theoretical field of affect within Geography and Sociology, arguing for shame as a useful affect in challenging implicit racial hierarchies in the process of creating transformative solidarity. Shame is an affect too often dismissed as unproductive and, as a result, its use within social movements has been significantly under‐researched. This paper argues against this representation of shame and instead explores its power in challenging hegemonic social relations. As an activist researcher, this theoretical development is part of a wider desire to interrogate the nuances of solidarity, to help myself and other activists to understand its importance and formation. Using an affective framework, this paper explores the role of shame in stimulating non‐migrant citizen solidarity with asylum seekers and refugees across the UK. Combining research on shame with ongoing discussions of solidarity and influential work by Bourdieu, the productive potential of affect is discussed. This paper argues that shame is an affect capable of creating a "rupture" in an individual or organisation's habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an investigation into female academics' experiences of living and working through the COVID‐19 pandemic in the United Kingdom (UK). A diary, diary‐interview method (DDIM) was used to gather qualitative data from 25 participants about their lives during the period March 2020–September 2021 and diary and interview data have since been curated and published in an open access digital archive. The paper argues firstly that in recording and interpreting change over time in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic, the methodology constitutes a qualitative longitudinal research (QLLR) approach. Secondly, that the method has the capacity to convey temporal disruption and complexity, aligned with notions of crisis as fast, slow and ongoing. Thirdly, that Nixon's theorising of 'slow violence' can be used to frame the impacts of the pandemic as gradual, unseen and banal despite potentially negative implications for female academics' career progression. Finally, the paper argues that gathering this data through DDIM and publishing it in a publicly accessible digital archive represents a necessary form of witness with the potential to be utilised for future interventions. This paper reports on an investigation using a diary, diary‐interview method (DDIM) into female academics' experiences of living and working through the COVID‐19 pandemic in the United Kingdom (UK). The paper argues that DDIM has the capacity to convey temporal disruption and complexity, aligned with notions of crisis as fast, slow and ongoing. Nixon's theorising of 'slow violence' is used to frame a consideration of the pandemic's longer‐term, negative implications for female academics' career progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Court ethnographies have commonly relied on the physical presence of the ethnographers. This paper explores the opportunities and the challenges of conducting court ethnographies without this physical presence. Specifically, it examines what it means to conduct remote ethnographies of legal processes where neither the ethnographer nor the other hearing participants are physically co‐present. The sudden shift towards remote hearings in fieldwork conducted during the COVID‐19 pandemic presented an opportunity to compare in‐person and remote ethnographic methods. Through a case study of bail hearings in the immigration tribunal in the UK, this paper explores the value and challenges associated with conducting remote ethnographies and asks how they can help to shed light on the impact of absences in legal events. Court ethnographies have commonly relied on the physical presence of the ethnographers. This paper explores the opportunities and the challenges of conducting court ethnographies without this physical presence. Specifically, it examines what it means to conduct remote ethnographies of legal processes where neither the ethnographer nor the other hearing participants are physically co‐present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper acknowledges that geographical fieldwork and fieldtrips can be deeply stressful, anxiety‐inducing, troubling, miserable, hard and exclusionary for many colleagues, students and pupils. Building on the critical insights of Bracken and Mawdsley's (Area, 36, 2004) 'Muddy Glee' we empirically extend disciplinary reflections on fieldwork, drawing on qualitative data from research with UK university‐based Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) academics who self‐identify as having mental health conditions which substantially affect their daily lives. These data prompt reflection on the nature and experience of fieldwork in two ways. First, they require acknowledgment of fieldwork as not just 'muddy', widening disciplinary imaginaries of fieldwork accessibility to encompass marginalities in/of Human Geography fieldwork practice. Second, contrary to pervasive disciplinary idealisations, these data demand recognition that fieldwork and fieldtrips are not necessarily gleeful but can be sites of intense latent anxiety and intersectional marginality. They evidence how fieldwork can often be experienced as sites of anxiety, isolation, marginalisation, and often silent or hidden distress. These data are not easy to read, and we argue that they require us to widen our disciplinary senses of what fieldwork is like. In conclusion we offer some prompts for reflection to think‐with this unease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines data in the public sphere on the global scope of geography's UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) projects. Building on decolonial critiques of development research, I argue that geography should frame "the global" of global research as a sphere of ethical choices in research design and practice. The distribution of funded projects in the UKRI Gateway data suggests geographers succeed where they extend on the more worthy aspects of the discipline's Area Studies legacy. The discipline's engagements with early career researchers, international colleagues, and the development sector, however, have potentially been reshaped by the GCRF and thus need closer examination. While the UK government has brought the GCRF programme to a close, further work on these themes should inform the next iteration of global research. The ethical choices that make research global will remain fundamental to equitable design and impact in global development projects, thus scholars in development geography should prepare to make their projects more transparent and accountable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to the conspicuous absence of reference to the local scale in national and global discourses of "green recovery" from COVID‐19, this paper articulates a series of interlinked research agendas united by a focus on what a "green recovery" might involve at a local scale within the context of the United Kingdom. We argue that geography as a discipline is particularly well placed to contribute to theoretical and practical framings of "green recovery" as manifested at and through a range of scales, including the micro (individual), meso (household), and what we term "meso+" (neighbourhood). Specifically, we signpost what might be considered "green shoots" worthy of urgent empirical investigation – shifts in everyday life and practice catalysed by COVID‐19 and with the potential to underpin longer‐lasting transformations towards socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable localities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing number of students in higher education, the student housing market has been becoming increasingly competitive and diversified. This intensification has led housing providers to supply all‐inclusive energy packages (i.e., the inclusion of electricity, gas, and water in the rent cost) to their tenants as a selling point. By connecting the geographies of students and energy, this paper aims to assess the magnitude of all‐inclusive energy packages and its effects on students' residential choices. Based on an online survey distributed to students at Loughborough University (UK), the paper shows that 80% of housing occupied by students is energy‐inclusive. These rental commodities are strongly considered by students, particularly new university entrants, in their housing choices, 70% of whom considered all‐inclusive rent to be an important factor in their residential choice. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that all‐inclusive energy packages are extensively provided throughout the student housing market: from the low‐energy efficient houses in multiple occupancy to the newly developed purpose‐built student accommodation. Finally, the paper underpins how providing energy‐inclusive rent tends to produce energy inequities by shielding some students from being in fuel poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary emerges from our collective interest in, and reflections on, the multiple ways in which parents working within Development Geography in UK academia negotiate the complexities of combining periods of overseas fieldwork with family life. Here, we bring our varied experiences of navigating these challenges (emotional, bureaucratic, and practical) into conversation with Bracken and Mawdsley's 'Muddy glee,' highlighting the ways in which a recognition of academics', especially female academics', childcare responsibilities has been largely absent from discussions around conducting fieldwork, specifically development fieldwork in the global South. This is a collective reflection on the multiple ways in which parents working within Development Geography in UK academia negotiate the complexities of combining periods of overseas fieldwork with family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]