Professor Isabel Dyck

Professor Isabel Dyck, BA (Econ) Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK, MA (Econ) Social Anthroplogy, University of Manchester, UK, PhD Social Geography, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Professor Emeritus

School of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Tel: 020 7882 5416
Fax: 020 7882 7479
Email: i.dyck@qmul.ac.uk

 

Isabel Dyck is a social and feminist geographer and a member of the Health, Place and Society research theme. She taught at the University of British Columbia prior to joining the School of Geography at Queen Mary in 2005. Her work has contributed to the development of health and feminist geography, theoretically and through methodological innovation.

Research interests:

The home is a central theme in Isabel’s research, which explores issues of gender, body and identity in analysing the constitution of everyday life within wider processes of social, economic, political and cultural change. Early work in Canada concerned women the restructuring of home and workplace environments by women living with chronic illness. This work is reflected in the books: Dyck, I., Lewis, N.D., & McLafferty, S. (eds).  Geographies of Women’s Health, London: Routledge. In Series: Routledge International Studies of Women and Place, J. Momsen & J. Monk (eds), 2001,  and Moss, P. & Dyck, I. Women, Body, Illness: Space and Identity in the Everyday Lives of Women with Chronic Illness. Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.

Her main current research interests concern the provision of long-term care in the home and various issues related to immigration and resettlement. Gender and generational differences in relation to immigration experiences provide a particular focus. Recent projects use the lens of therapeutic landscapes from health geography to examine immigrant women’s re-making of home and to investigate the continuities and transformations of health practices through processes of migration. This research has been conducted in Vancouver, Canada, and London. In addition to gaining insight into how place, culture and health practices interweave dynamically, this work shows the centrality of the materiality and meanings of ‘home’ in how health is defined and managed. A range of qualitative methods has been used in these studies, including film.

Publications:

  • England, K. & Dyck, I. Managing the body work of home care, Sociology of Health and Illness , 33(2): 206-219, 2011

  • Dyck, I. & England, K. Homes for care: Reconfiguring care relations and practices. In: Christine Ceci, Kristin Bjornsdottir and Mary Ellen Purkis (eds) Home, Care, Practices: Critical Perspectives on Care at Home for Older People, Routledge (2011)
  • Dyck, I. Embodied Life. In: V.Del Casino, M. Thomas, P. Cloke and R. Panelli (eds) A Companion to Social Geography, Blackwell, 2011
  • Creese, G., Dyck, I. & McLaren, A. “The problem of ‘human capital’: gender, place, and immigrant household strategies of re-skilling in Vancouver, Canada” In: Kofman, E. et al (eds) Gender, Generation and the Family in International Migration (2011)
  • Dyck, I. Geographies of disability: reflections on new body knowledges. In. Chouinard, V., Hall, E., Wilton, R. (eds) Towards enabling geographies  ‘Disabled’ bodies and minds in society and space ,  pp.253-263. Ashgate, 2010           
  • Creese, G., Dyck, I. & McLaren, A.T. (2008) The ‘flexible’ immigrant? Human capital discourse, the family and  labour market strategies, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 9 (3): 269-288, 2008
  • Dyck, I & Dossa, D (2007) Place Health and ‘home’: Gender and migration in the constitution of healthy space Health and Place, 13: 691-701.
  • Dyck, I & Kearns, R.A. (2006) Structuration theory: agency, structure and everyday life. In: Stuart Aitken & Gill Valentine (eds) Approaches to Human Geography. London, Sage, pp. 86-96.
  • Dyck, I. (2006) Travelling tales and migratory meanings: South Asian migrant women talk of place, health and healing. Social & Cultural Geography, 7(1): 1-18.
  • Dyck, I. (2005) Feminist geography, the ‘everyday’, and local-global relations: hidden spaces of place-making. The Canadian Geographer, 49(3): 233-243.
  • Dyck, I., Kontos, P, Angus, J., and McKeever, P. (2005) The home as a site for long term care: Meanings and management of bodies and spaces, Health and Place, 11(2): 173-185.
  • Angus, J., Kontos, P., Dyck, I., McKeever, P. & Poland, B. (2005) The personal significance of home: Habitus and the experience of receiving long term home care, Sociology of Health and Illness, 27(2): 161-187.
  • Kearns, R.A. & Dyck, I. (2005) Culturally safe research. In: Dianne Wepa (ed) Cultural Safety in Aotearoa New Zealand, Pearson Education (NZ), pp.79-88.
  • Dyck, I & McLaren, A. (2004) Telling it like it is … Gender, place and multiculturalism in immigrant women’s settlement narratives Gender, Place and Culture, 11(4):513-534.
  • McLaren, A.T. & Dyck, I. (2004) Mothering, human capital and the “ideal immigrant, Women’s Studies International Forum, 27 (1): 41-53.
  • Moss, P & Dyck, I. (2003) Embodying social geography In K. Anderson, M. Domosh, S. Pile & N. Thrift (eds) Handbook of Cultural Geography. Sage Publications.
  • Dyck, I. (2003) Feminism and Health Geography: twin tracks or divergent agendas? Gender, Place and Culture, 10(4), 361-368.
  • Moss, P. & Dyck, I. (2002) Women, Body, Illness: Space and Identity in the Everyday Lives of Women with Chronic Illness. Lanham, Maryland , Rowman and Littlefield.
  • Dyck, I. (2002) Further notes on feminist research: Embodied knowledge in place.” In: P. Moss (ed.) Feminist Geography in Practice: Research and Methods,Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 234-244.

Professional activities and outreach:

International Editorial Board Member of Health and Place
Life Member, Clare Hall, Cambridge, UK.