ENRGHI 2025: Embodiment and water - blue bodies

We are delighted to invite papers for the 22nd ENRGHI Conference, a two-day event organised by and for postgraduate and early career researchers. This event is supported by the RGS-IBG Geographies of Health and Wellbeing Research Group (GHWRG).

This longstanding and supportive conference offers an opportunity for PhD and ECR to present their work gain constructive feedback and engage with a vibrant international community of up and coming researchers who share an interest in the geographies of health, wellbeing, and impairment.

Alongside showcasing the breadth of health and wellbeing research, this year ENERGI will feature a special stand: Blue Bodies – embracing human, animal and ecological connections to blue spaces. We invite submissions from those involved in health or wellbeing research within and outside of geography as a discipline.

ENRGHI 2025 will be hosted by the University of Bristol and held in person. This two day event will also include workshops, networking opportunities.

• 7 October 2025: a collaborative workshop afternoon including sessions on writing your first PhD paper, post-PhD pathways, and managing life at the end of the doctorate, followed by optional food and drinks in Bristol.
• 8 October 2025: a full day of research presentations and panels showcasing the breadth of work across health and wellbeing geographies.

Special Strand: Blue Bodies

Blue Bodies invites postgraduate and early-career researchers to immerse in a day of critical and creative engagement with the watery, fleshy, and more-than-human geographies of health and wellbeing.

We ask: What happens when we think of bodies—human, animal, ecological—not just as shaped by the sea, but part of it?

This interdisciplinary strand draws from marine studies, posthuman geographies, environmental humanities, and embodiment research, welcoming work that floats between boundaries—intellectual, ecological, or bodily. With the joint climate, biodiversity and wellbeing crises, engaging with blue environment opens up new questions for health. By exploring the intersection of embodiment, water and wellbeing this stand offers an opportunity to examine how water shapes health geography research.

Continuing on from this year’s Annual Conference theme ‘Geographies of creativity/creative geographies’ we especially encourage experimental formats, including visual or sound pieces, autoethnographies, collaborative work, and sensory or site-based explorations.

Themes may include (but are not limited to):

• Embodiment and the blue humanities – oceanic subjectivities, sensory experiences, affective geographies of the sea.
• Watery healthscapes – coastal care, marine mental health, therapeutic seascapes.
• Blue-green entanglements – ecologies of land and sea, estuarine bodies, aquatic pollution.
• Bodies in crisis – saltwater trauma, sea crossings, resilience, climate grief and repair.
• Place, identity and memory – indigenous/local sea knowledge, coastal heritage, changing shorelines, shifting baselines.
• Methodological fluidities – creative, embodied, speculative, and participatory practices in marine and or health research.

Broader topics of interest:

As always, the scope of ENRGHI remains broad. We also welcome research across the cultures of health and wellbeing, including:

• Health inequalities, justice, and equity;
• Therapeutic landscapes, green/blue and enabling spaces;
• Disability, stigma, and mental health in everyday life;
• Health, migration, and mobilities;
• Health practices, infrastructures, and spatial access;
• Emotion work, ethics, and sensitive topics in health research;
• Creative health geographies (e.g. art, theatre, performance);
• Public engagement in health geography;
• Death, grief, loss, and cultural understandings of illness;
• Gender, sex, reproduction, and embodied health;
• Framing illness: historical and cross-cultural approaches.

Submission guidelines:

• Abstracts: max 250 word;
• Include title, author name(s), affiliation, and 4 keywords;
• Indicate your preference: oral presentation, poster, and/or session chairing;
• Oral presentations: 10 minutes and 5 minutes discussion;
• Posters: A0, Portrait;
• Submit via email to enrghi2025@gmail.com, subject: ENRGHI CfP;
• Deadline: Mid-August 2025 (exact date to be confirmed);
• Please note, we will accept research-in-progress items.

Registration

Registration will remain open until September, dates TBC. There is a nominal registration fee of £15 which will contribute towards funding the conference. Limited grants will be available to help cover registration fee and travel costs. Full details will be announced shortly.

Booking information

• Advance booking for this event is required. In order to book you will need an account on our website. If you already have an account you will be prompted to log in when you click 'book now'. Please create an account if you do not have one yet (you do not need to be a member of the Society to create an account).

If you have any questions or require assistance with your booking, please email events@rgs.org

Accessibility and inclusivity

We are committed to creating a welcoming, accessible, and supportive space. Please let us know how we can accommodate your participation by emailing us at access@rgs.org