I joined the Open University in 2008 as a Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care. Prior to that I spent seven years as a Lecturer in Health Geographies at the University of Manchester.
BSc University of Lancaster
PhD University of Wales, Aberystwyth
I am Chair of K202 Care, Community and Welfare and am part of the team producing the new Level 2 Health and Social Care course. I am also a member of the Course Team for K309 Communication in Health and Social Care, and have contributed to K260 Death and Dying.
My research is wide ranging but the driving theme is a curiosity for how people and organisations interact around issues of health and wellbeing. I'm particularly interested in how identity, experience and social change empower or disempower, and how people can bring about change. This has resulted in studies on ME, maternal health, parenting, gay men’s health and civil society. More recently I have been exploring the use of alternative spiritualities by individuals and organisations to enhance wellbeing. I have a particular interest in qualitative methods.
The Spirituality of Everyday Life: spaces of experience and practice
This project is exploring the growing ‘spiritual turn’ in Western society, addressing everyday spirituality at a variety of geographical scales, from the body to the nation, to provide a deeper exploration of the way in which apparently individualised appropriations of spiritual awareness impact and compound across society and space. You can learn more about the project by visiting the Everyday Spirituality Blog.
Reflexive parenting: exploring parental decision making (pump priming from the Royal Geographical Society)
Parenting represents one experience which may challenge our understanding of the world and prompt us into a complex process of reflexivity. Progressive medicalisation of childbirth and parenting – in Western society in particular - has led to an emphasis on health professional involvement, and a lack of attention to the wider role of civil society and empowerment in parental decision making. Nonetheless parental decision making varies considerably geographically within and between countries. This venture began with a small pilot project funded by the RGS to develop collaborative links through a research visit to the Public Health and Caring Sciences, University of Uppsala, Sweden in 2006. The aim is to explore the social and cultural embeddedness of parental decision making within the first year of a child’s life. The comparative perspective between Sweden and England - two countries with very different patterns of infant feeding and parenting cultures - will help to shed light on how and why parents make the decisions they do.
Past projects
Health literacy and framing of health messages in the gay community (Economic and Social Research Council)
This project, in collaboration with Professor Paul Bellaby and Dr John Goldring at the Institute for Social, Cultural and Policy Research at Salford University, was driven by the belief that current understandings of health literacy are based on a narrow interpretation of ‘illness literacy’. Using gay men as a case study, the project suggested policy developers and service providers would benefit from a broader understanding of both health and literacy in order to target health promotion messages.
Development, Participation and Health (Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, as well as contributions from DFID Health Systems Development Programme and Manchester University Research Support Fund)
Globally participation has been elevated (some would say controversially) to prime position in health systems development. However this faith in participation is not without its problems and there is no consistent and concrete agenda, theoretically or pragmatically. Participation is a complex medley of thoughts, actions and outcomes which are inherently political – seeking to define the relationship between development ‘subject’ and ‘object’. Drawing on discourses of citizenship, patients’ rights and power, this on-going programme of work seeks to develop theoretical insight whilst bringing together international practitioners to develop knowledge and understanding of participation in action.
Public Health and Primary Care (Department of Health)
I was employed as a researcher on this programme at the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre, University of Salford. The project examined public health pathways, organisational and professional cultures of practice, focusing on how professional communities of practice influence the dissemination, uptake and development of policy initiatives on the ground.
Recent publications
MacKian (2008) The Art of Geographic Interpretation. In DeLyser, Aitken, Crang, Herbert and McDowell (eds) The Handbook for Qualitative Methods in Geography Sage, London
MacKian (2008) Wellbeing. In Kitchen and Thrift (eds) International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography Elsevier
MacKian S (2008) What the papers say: reading therapeutic landscapes of women’s health and empowerment in Uganda Health and Place 14(1). 106-115
Popay J, Kowarzik U, Mallinson S, Mackian S, and Barker J (2007) Social problems, primary care and pathways to help and support: addressing health inequalities at the individual level. Part I: the GP perspective Journal of Epidemiol Community Health 61. 966-971.
Popay J, Kowarzik U, Mallinson S, Mackian S, and Barker J (2007) Social problems, primary care and pathways to help and support: addressing health inequalities at the individual level. Part II: lay perspectives Journal of Epidemiol Community Health 61. 972-977.
Mallinson S, Popay J, Kowarzik U, MacKian S (2006) Developing the public health workforce: a ‘communities of practice’ perspective Policy and Politics 34(2). 265-85
MacKian S (2004) Mapping reflexive communities: visualising the geographies of emotion Journal of Social and Cultural Geography 5(4). 615-631
MacKian S, Bedri N and Lovel H (2004) Up the garden path: where might health seeking behaviour take us? Health Policy and Planning 19(3). 137-146
Popay J, Mallinson S, Kowarzik U, MacKian S, Busby H and Elliott H (2004) Developing Public Health Work in Local Health Systems Primary Health Care Research and Development 5(4). 338-350
MacKian S, Elliott H, Busby H and Popay, J (2003) ‘Everywhere and nowhere’: locating and understanding the ‘new’ public health Health and Place 9(3). 219-229
MacKian S and Parkhurst J (2003) Access, health seeking and utilization of maternal health services Working Paper Series, HSD Programme, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
MacKian S (2002) A review of health seeking behaviour: progress and prospects Working Paper Series, HSD Programme, LSHTM
MacKian S (2002) Complex Cultures: rereading the story about health and social capital Critical Social Policy 22(2). 203-225
Banks M and MacKian S (2000) Jump in! The water’s warm: a comment on Peck’s ‘grey geography’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers New Series 25
MacKian S (2000) Contours of coping: mapping the subject world of long-term illness Health and Place 6. 95-104
Current and past PhD supervisions:
Briony Smith (part-time) Placing Post-Conflict Societies: Relationships of Peace, Well Being and Citizenship (co-supervisor, Dr Sam Hickey, University of Manchester)
John Goldring There’s more to health than HIV: gay men’s health and social capital (co-supervisor Professor Paul Bellaby, University of Salford) Completed 2007
I would be very happy to discuss potential PhD projects with students who see a synergy with my research interests, particularly in the field of spiritual wellbeing, pregnancy, birth and parenting, sexuality and health or lay participation in health systems.
ext. 59170
+44(0)1908 659170
http://everydayspirituality.blog spot.com/2007/10/welcome- to-esp.html
