About me:

Professor Michael Leyshon is a social geographer. His research explores how third sector agencies and small businesses innovate to produce social change. In particular his work seeks to ground place-based person-centred approaches in a variety of locations, practices and performances, by focusing on issues relating to care in rural environments.

Michael worked previously at Gloucester Constabulary as a researcher before moving to the University of Exeter to undertake a PhD in Geography on ‘Youth Identity, Culture and Marginalisation in the Countryside’. He has since worked at the University of Exeter’s Centre for Geography and Environmental Science, at the Penryn Campus in Cornwall of which he is now the Head of Centre. He is the Co-founder and Co-Director of the Social Innovation Group at the University of Exeter, and an Associate of the Centre for Rural Policy Research, University of Exeter. He has been a visiting International Scholar at Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, NJ, USA, Miami University, Ohio, USA and Kenyon College, Ohio, USA.

Outside the department, Michael is a member of the Board of Trustees of Volunteer Cornwall (2012-date).

For my students: 

I have two drop in sessions per week which sometimes change from week to week. If you are a student at the University of Exeter and would like to come to a drop in session, please add your name(s) to a specific slot (date/time) and also specify if you want to meet in person or online via Microsoft Teams here: Drop-In-Sessions.

Research specialisms

My career has had two interlinked key phases. In the first part of my career, I led debates in youth geographies on the role of identity, care (youth work) and place in the complex lives of young people in rural areas. In the second phase of my career to date, I have further developed my research interests on identity and care in two fields of contemporary relevance and strategic importance: i) geographies of volunteering; and ii) geographies of innovation and business.

Social Innovation Group, University of Exeter

I am the Co-Director of the Social Innovation Group (Prof Catherine Leyshon, Dr Shuks Esmene, Natalie Craig, Rahul Mittal, Matthew Rogers) which is a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from geography, anthropology, health research, and journalism who work in collaboration with organisations in the third sector, health and social care, restorative justice, the environment sector, local, regional and national government. Our focus is social innovation at all scales, using place-based, person-centred approaches and tools. We produce academic work, evidence and practical tools to support individuals, charities, governments, organisations and agencies – anyone interested in social innovation. Current projects include the Health and Wellbing Workforce Strategy for Cornwall, AHRC - Creative research methods for evaluations: a ‘What Works Where and How?’ guide.

We attract funding from a variety of sources, such as the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Arts and Hummnaities research Council (AHRC), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), European Social Fund (ESF), EU Interreg, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), NHS, Cornwall Council, amongst others.

Follow us on Twitter or Facebook and sign up to our mailing list to keep up to date with the latest news, events and publications.

More Information

See my Google Scholar profile

Or my Research Gate profile

Or my Academia Education profile

Teaching Specialism

I am committed to delivering excellent teaching to undergraduate and postgraduate students - see my teaching profile. If yuo want to know more about how I think about the future of higher education listen to the Blueprints of Tomorrow podcast now available on the Spotify channel “Blueprints for tomorrow” or on the website - I discuss dynamic educational spaces in Episode 10:

Podcasts – Future Learning Environments (www.futurelearningenvironments.org/podcasts)

Interests:

My current research focuses on social innovation and the current Challenges for the Voluntary Sector. The growth in Britain’s ageing population coupled with the significant financial pressures on the NHS mean that innovative approaches are needed to deliver public services. The voluntary care sector is playing an increasingly important role in delivering these services. As the UK Governments White Paper on volunteering explained, “the voluntary and community sector is uniquely placed to reach socially isolated people and connect them to befriending services and other networks of friendship and support” (HMSO, 2012: 22). Because as we know, people are happiest and healthiest when they are active, independent, valued members of their communities, and supported by a network of family and friends. Despite potential the voluntary care sector still faces great challenges; especially around training, organising and retaining volunteers in communities.

My career has had two interlinked key phases. In the first part of my career, I led debates in youth geographies on the role of identity, care (youth work) and place in the complex lives of young people in rural areas. In the second phase of my career to date, I have further developed my research interests on identity and care in two fields of contemporary relevance and strategic importance: i) geographies of volunteering; and ii) geographies of innovation and business.

Geographies of youth, identity, and care

My research has made a number of important contributions to understanding the complexities of the everyday life of young people living in rural areas in the UK and USA. This work is characterised by bottom-up, participatory approaches which seek to give voice to young people, by prioritising their needs and experiences (Leyshon, 2002; 2004; 2005). The research combines rich empirical data this with theoretical and methodological insights from geographies of identity and care to recover the voices of young people so often elided in literature. My main theoretical contribution focused on developing ideas of around the concept of ‘inbetweeness’; being between places, ages, care and lifecourse experiences (Leyshon, 2010; 2013). In particular my research on memory and place (Leyshon, 2011; 2013; 2014; 2015) and young peoples’ flat ontologies of self has made a significant contribution to the study of youth cultures in geography and other related disciplines (Leyshon, 2015; 2016). My research on young people led to me being a CI on the successful ESRC Capacity Building Cluster in Sports, Leisure and Tourism at the University. I have recently returned to writing about young people through the lens of environmental volunteering and connections to place (Leyshon et al, 2021). I am exploring ideas on how voluntary community action and place-based knowledges can be used as a force for social change (Esmene, Rogers, Leyshon, 2020). These studies link to my more contemporary work below.

Geographies of volunteering

My current research focusses on a critical engagement with geographies of volunteering. This burgeoning area of geographical enquiry seeks to provide person-centred, place-based solutions to social problems through co-producing knowledge with individuals, agencies, the voluntary sector and businesses. My research is gathering intellectual momentum and impact through a range of projects (26 grants in the last 14 years, recently HAIRE (ESF), Smartline (ERDF) and Anchor (ESRC/Duchy Charitable Trust). These grants have enabled me to build a team of researchers and form the Social Innovation Group which I co-direct. My current research illustrates that in policy and practice, volunteers are often framed as units of action which satisfy a given need. We have offered an alternative theoretical model of volunteering through a Theory of Change. In Walker et al (2020) and Williams et al, (2021) we showed how this can lead to missed opportunities, with volunteers not fulfilling their potential, or experiencing dissatisfaction. In Walker et al (2020) and Leyshon et al (2021) we further argued that mobilising volunteers, realising their potential, and involving them in the co-production of care requires improved volunteer management practices. Building on earlier work (Moir and Leyshon, 2013), we critiqued how the choice architecture of volunteering, structural, management and operational levels that enable volunteer action in the new decentralised state system, requires fundamental reform from breaking down silo modes of delivery to the promotion of new forms of civic duty (Leyshon et al 2021). In Leyshon et al 2019, we showed how changes to care legislation since 2012 have created a tension between the rhetoric of co-production at the heart of policy and greater involvement of the voluntary sector in the care provided by GPs and multi-disciplinary teams. The barriers that exist to incorporating volunteers into conversations about care are both spatial – such conversations go on in places that volunteers do not have access to – and institutional – because of concerns about risk and data protection.

My research has started to challenge existing orthodoxy in the academic literature on volunteering by drawing attention to the difference that place and identity make in creating specific cultures of care (Harrison et al 2012). In our research on walking groups and social prescribing we illustrate the importance of sociability and how being part of a self-sustaining voluntary social group has important implications for long term benefits of social prescribing (Esmene et al, 2020). Further, in Colebrooke et al (2021) we developed the notion of emplaced ‘edgy-ness’ as an affective characteristic resulting from an ‘anticipatory unease’ emerging in relation to the lived experiences of austerity. In our research on care and social housing (Smartline) and heathy aging (Healthy Ageing through Innovation in Rural Europe) we have developed a raft of tools that enable individuals and organisations to disrupt ‘business as usual’ models of care delivery. For example, the Guided Conversation tool uses an individual service user’s wider needs and aspirations, and their views of their community, surroundings and wellbeing, to integrate them into their communities, help them participate in community innovations and reduce demand on statutory health and social care services. Cumulatively, these recent papers emphasise the importance of, first, how the state is withdrawing from non-statutory services, second, how responses determined through specific spatialised cultures of care can work, and finally, directs future research to rethink the role and purpose of volunteers in the emerging shadow health care sector. This research is particularly prescient as the NHS role out local Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships in which the voluntary sector is entering new partnerships for the delivery of statutory care.

Geographies of Innovation and Business

My work has informed both academic and policy debates on the ways in which businesses innovate around climate change. My research has focused on two lines of enquiry, first business networks and knowledge exchange, and second, mobilising knowledge and innovation. I developed the former research with colleagues at Exeter, Edinburgh and Cardiff universities where we explore the role of climate change for business strategies, specifically how entrepreneurs and businesses can be potential frontrunners in attaining a low-carbon economy through their embeddedness in local societies (Kaesehage et al 2014; 2017). Our research on business community networks has won awards. The book Social Innovation and Sustainable Entrepreneurship won Business Innovation book of the Year 2019 and our chapter was singled out for praise (Kaesehage and Leyshon, 2018). My research on mobilising knowledges in rural spaces illustrates how opportunities for transitions to smart systems can occur (Esmene et al 2016; 2020). This research proposes new ways of understanding how individual identity positions impact the dissemination of new technologies (Esmene and Leyshon 2019). I am currently in the process of bringing together my expertise in geographies of volunteering and climate change in a special issue for the journal Sustainability after being invited to do so by the journal. My future research plans on geographies of innovation and business will focus on theorising how knowledges of climate change shape and move through informal voluntary business relationships to produce innovation and behaviour change.

Qualifications:

BA (Wales)
MPhil (Staffs)
PhD (Exon)