Professor Bethan Evans

Bethan Evans is Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Liverpool.

Bethan’s research is, broadly speaking, driven by a concern with the ways in which particular spaces, policies and practices produce and reinforce ideas about acceptable forms of embodiment, how spaces are experienced by different people, and how we might create more inclusive spaces.

Bethan has explored these themes in relation to a range of empirical contexts. In work on fat embodiment, Bethan has explored the (bio)politics of anti-obesity policies in schools, public health, urban planning, and geographic scholarship, and the ways in which social, material and political economic factors interact in spaces of commercial air travel in ways that produce symbolic and material violence for fat passengers and disabled passengers.

Bethan’s work has also considered the role of friendship and curiosity in relation to place-based understandings of wellbeing, and has explored the geographies of youth and engaging young people in political histories.

Recently, Bethan has been researching lived experiences of Energy Limiting Conditions (ELC) in the context of health and social care and academic work, seeking to find ways to create more inclusive futures for people with ELC. This work has been funded by grants from the British Academy/Leverhulme, AHRC and an ISRF political economy fellowship.

Much of Bethan’s research is interdisciplinary, working across geography, the medical humanities, critical public health and crip/disability studies, and carried out through partnerships with activists, disabled people’s organisations, people with lived experience and practitioners, to centre collaborative and creative research.