Visiting scholar

UCG would like to give a warm welcome to Virve Repo, visiting scholar at our Faculty.

Virve is a post-doctoral researcher in the department of geography and geology at the University of Turku (Finland).

Let us get to know her in this short interview.

What is your research field? Can you explain what carceral geography is?

I am a human geographer, although my background is also in cultural history. I actually think that these two research fields complement each other rather well. Well, I could talk about the carceral geography almost endlessly, but I will try to keep it short. I finished my doctoral thesis in 2020 and used carceral geography as a theoretical approach. Carceral geography is a rather new sub-discipline, the term was coined in 2011 by Prof Dominique Moran. It studies, for example, the nature of carceral spaces and how they are experienced, the spatial geographies of carceral systems and the relationship between the carceral and the punitive state. As the name indicates, carceral geography started as a study of prisons and punishment facilities, but nowadays, when it has been more thoroughly conceptualized, it can be related to also to other institutions and spaces. My research included, for example, alternative communities, nursing homes and gero-psychiatric ward.

What brought you to Groningen?

I have had some similar research interests with Prof Bettina Van Hoven and I wanted to meet her in person and share some thoughts. The research visit was planned already to happen in 2020, but because of the pandemic, it had to be postponed and shortened as well. I am still very glad I made it here now.

On which research project are you currently working on?

At the moment I am finishing articles about forensic psychiatric hospitals in Finland. These articles are part of the project “Spaces of confinement and the institutions of care and control in Finland” which is about to end (for my part) in May. After that, I will move on to a project called “Space, justice and everyday democracy” where I study how elderly people in suburbs have opportunities to influence society and senior activism. I am also writing a text in Finnish about qualitative methods in carceral geography based on my own experiences.

Can you tell us a bit about the 'European Conference on Mental Health'?

The European Conference on Mental Health (ECMH) is my “hobby”, I do that in addition to my research workload. Sometimes I have also combined these two and presented my own papers or chaired sessions there too. I have been part of the organizing team since 2013. Given that the organization is small, I have been able to do various things during these years and have gained good experience organizing events. The annual conference gathers approximately 400 people from all over the world and from different research fields related to mental health. The idea to this conference is to offer a low threshold forum to researchers, developers and practitioners. But also to experts by experience. We feel that it is very important to give a voice to those people who have personal experiences around mental health challenges and treatments. The conference is held every year in some European city (although it was online for the last couple of years). Our last live conference was in Belfast in 2019, this year the conference is in Lisbon and I am really looking forward to seeing everyone face to face again.

What do you like most about Groningen and your stay at UCG?

I like Groningen a lot. The city itself is really beautiful and not too big to “handle”. But what I really like the most (also in UCG) is that people are super nice. I would like to thank everyone who I have met already. You have been very welcoming, helpful and kind (special thanks to Bettina, of course). I will be here until 15 April, so if you want to have a chat, come visit me in my office - room number 207.

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Get in contact with Virve