Title: Anxious spaces: The social geographies of social anxiety
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: The following project objectives are formulated to secure a successful track record of independent research, collaboration and skills development that will support my professional development and longer-term career aims: *Develop a strong publications record *Develop impact opportunities and strengthen existing research networks *Disseminate the research findings to key communities and stakeholders *Create new opportunities for collaboration and build future research opportunities and funding proposals *Extend the reach of my work and promote the aims and activities of the PDF within/beyond academia Aim: submit a book proposal (Dec 20) and develop a manuscript for submission (Sept 21). A seminal text Anxious Spaces will advance the sub-disciplinary field of health geographies and make critical contributions to the existing research landscape of social anxiety (SA). The text will be prepared for academic and non-academic audiences for publication with Routledge Geographies of Health Book Series. I will develop a substantive plan for publication by preparing a book proposal (with two example chapters), and timeline for submission to press. While the proposal is in review, I will develop chapters from the thesis. Examiners advised the thesis could readily be converted into a monograph. Proposed manuscript outline is as follows: Introduction Set the scene, ambition and purpose Chapter 1 Governance: how dominant discourses of shape to societal and personal understandings of SA Chapter 2 Spaces: how people experience illness relative to the places and spaces they inhabit (e.g. body and home) highlighting the relational dynamics between health and place Chapter 3 Embodiment: emotional and affective 'intensities' of SA examining the various ways social anxiety is embodied and enacted. Chapter 4 Habits/habitual: how social anxiety disrupts the 'normal' routines of daily life, leading to the introduction of new habits and routines as everyday coping strategies. Conclusion Sets agenda for future interdisciplinary research and offers recommendations for SA policy, practice, advocacy and activism I will write an academic journal article, Extimacy of Anxiety, to set an agenda for geographical scholarship in a new age of anxiety, shaping debates between the sub-fields of 'psychoanalytic geographies' and 'geographies of mental health' with reference to SA. Submitted to a high-profile geography journal e.g. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers or Progress in Human Geography. The supplementary plan will be to develop sustainable contacts with collaborators in different parts of the SA and mental health policy, professional and practice communities, seeking their advice to steer my research-related impactful activity and forge future research ventures. The aim will be to create a sequence of online workshops with a cohort of people with social anxieties, in part generating new research data to prime future research funding applications, and also provide a basis for a experience-led booklet to bring the lived accounts of SA-and potentials for peer support, advice and enhanced recognition-into wider public domains: *Talking Points (1) and Methods (2) paper with The McPin Foundation (1) to spark and shape debate in the field of mental health e.g. treatment and medicalisation (2) discuss 'digital research methods' to inform and develop service-user involvement in mental health research. *3 online workshops will address 3 significant challenges that arose from the thesis: 1 Spacing Anxiety, 2 Governing Anxiety, and 3 Beyond Anxiety. These challenges will be synthesised into a co-produced booklet based on participant's experiences of social anxiety. A minimal amount of new research (max. 25% of PDF) will help shape and inform the research-related outputs. *Website to document activities and disseminate findings/outputs from the project.

Lay abstract: "I stand on the side lines of social life, immobilised by a fear of interacting with or being around other people. I am terrified of what they must think about me. It feels like a fear of living because people are everywhere and it is impossible to do anything, [such as] answer the door, walk down the street, buy something from a shop, order food in a restaurant, go to university, get a job, travel on the bus, go to the gym without encountering other people." (Research participant, Boyle, 2019) Social anxiety (SA) provokes intense distress for those who experience social interactions and spaces and threatening, restricting everyday life, relations and opportunities for employment and civic engagement. SA places vast social and economic burden on the individual indicated by low educational performance and economic status, greater absenteeism and unemployment, and poor quality of life and interpersonal relationships (DuPont et al. 2002; Schneier et al. 1994; Liebowitz et al. 1985). The form, intensity and experience of anxiety shapes, and is shaped by, a range of social interactions, situations, spaces and structures. Yet, dominant biomedical models suggest organic or cognitive 'abnormality' as the underlying cause of 'disorder', overlooking these social conditions. Equally, experiences of intense emotional distress are often diagnosed as 'illness', one that is locatable and targeted with specific pharmaceutical and therapeutic interventions. Accordingly, the aim of the PDF is to advance new, novel, and much-needed knowledge of social anxiety (SA) as a social, spatial and temporal phenomenon and end the relative cultural silence with respect to experiences of SA. The PDF aims to resource academic and public-facing research work which will examine the role of geography in people's experience and management of SA and offer critical reflection on, and alternatives to, dominant framings of mental and emotional distress. The project will allow me to co-produce public-facing stories which will be informed by doctoral research but also enhanced through a series of new online 'engagement workshops' with individual people with SA, and key stakeholder groups including mental health charities and foundations. The output from this work will target a variety of audiences with personal and/or professional interest on the topic of SA including, researchers working with people experiencing SA, mental health and/or health professionals, and people living with SA. As a result of this activity I will co-produce a booklet of lived experiences. The booklet will be a valuable collection of lived experience testimonies to help individuals make sense of their experiences and for health-care professionals supporting help-seeking and recovery. In a book suitable academic and non-academic audiences alike, I will write of the social and spatial informed framework for SA established in my doctoral research, one that communicates the complexity of living with SA. This aims to challenge established 'illness/disorder' models that frame SA by acknowledging the dimensions and diversity of experience. It will account for the history of social anxiety and its psychiatric classification. This will help to generate a socially and spatially informed understanding that examines how everyday life shapes, and is shaped by, persistent and disruptive social anxieties. This socio-spatial framework examines the multiple 'levels' and 'layers' of experience, from the most intimate symptoms and ruminations to the wider societal and structural dimensions that foster and promote its occurrence.

Research activity codes: 7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS;7.3 MANAGEMENT AND DECISION MAKING
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH