Catz Leavers Win Prestigious Prizes for Best Undergraduate Dissertations
St Catherine’s College is delighted to announce the first of two prestigious departmental prizes awarded to two recent graduates. Ted Holbrook (2022, Geography) and Benjamin Beggs (2022, Geography) have each been recognised for their outstanding work on dissertations within their respective research areas on the undergraduate Geography course.
Ted Holbrook has been awarded the Linda McDowell Prize for Best Critical Human Geography Dissertation. ”Look… I Know You Don’t Want To, But It’s Got To Be Done’: Examining Practices of (Quasi-)carceral Immobility Within and Beyond Residential Dementia Care Homes’ arose from a deeply personal place: the experience of his own ‘Nan’ with her dementia, her care home, and the routines enforced by these environments for the ‘benefit of their residents.’ Ted’s lived familiarity with his grandmother’s experience produced the dissertation’s guiding premise: how is it possible for the geography of care, empathy, and support in such environments to coincide with the concurrent geography of control, surveillance, and confinement?
The assessing committee concluded that Ted found a satisfactory answer to this question; and, moreover, that his dissertation provided ‘an insightful exploration into the complex interplay between care and control in residential dementia care settings.’ In particular, the project was acknowledged for its theoretical grounding, thought-provoking content, and emotional impact. Ted was commended for his observant, analytical, and wholly compassionate approach to the work.
Ted’s methodological and thorough dissertation is the culmination of two years’ work. His diligent fieldwork began in the summer of his second year, when Ted conducted an independent period of observation and investigation in a residential care home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire – intentionally similar to that in which his grandmother resides. Through careful planning and detailed analysis, Ted was able to develop his inspiration – his connection to his grandmother and her experience – into empirical academic writing. From this first observation period, and the subsequent year of composition and consolidation, Ted posited that the inflexibility of residential control ‘occurs from above, by the institution; is internalised from below, by the residents; and also plays out in a complex state of liminality in spaces beyond the care home.’ In sum, the carceral-like control of dementia patients is enforced at all level, and it becomes embodied – following them to their individual domestic and social spaces. Through the work, he also developed a defining concept for this area of research: ‘the carceral ethic of care’, which has come to describe ‘a form of everyday control over residents’ lives that mirrors carceral logics – through routine, rhythms, and temporality … enacted for protective rather than punitive purposes.’ In the work and elsewhere, this term is useful for maintaining the clear discrepancy between dementia care environments and criminal detention systems – in logic, location, and impact.
Ted comments, “My dissertation was, at heart, both an academic and a deeply personal project. The research period was incredibly insightful, humbling, and often emotionally challenging as I reflected upon my Nan’s experiences. It is for these reasons that these honours, made by the School of Geography and the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)’s Geographies of Health and Wellbeing Research Group, are so very meaningful and appreciated.
I am indebted to my supervisor, Dr Fiona Ferbrache, whose consistent support was invaluable; more widely, I am grateful to all the Geography tutors at Catz and at SoGE, who invested so much time and additional effort into my cohort.”
The Linda McDowell Prize was established to celebrate the impressive career and contributions of Professor Linda McDowell CBE FBA, Professor Emerita in Human Geography at the School of Geography and the Environment (SoGE). Following her retirement from the Chair in Human Geography, she held a Leverhulme Fellowship for two years, then an Emerita Research Fellowship. With extensive research and teaching honours before her arrival at SoGE, and with continued awards and recognitions following her retirement from the University – including an Honorary DSc from St Andrew’s University – the Linda McDowell Prize is a true mark of academic and research excellence. It is awarded to undergraduate geographers whose Human Geography dissertations distinguish themselves by the quality of their research, writing, and logic.
Ted was awarded a cash prize of £50.00 for this achievement – but the motivation and the impact of the work are priceless. His research group was also nominated for the RGS-IBG ‘Health and Wellbeing’ Prize.
Ted will continue to develop his work examining the care-carceral system as he begins the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance at Keble College and SoGE this autumn. Catz will catch up with Ted in a few weeks for an exclusive interview about his undergraduate experience and this distinctive dissertation.
We warmly congratulate Ted on this result, and we look forward to seeing what he achieves on this next course of study. As Ted says, “I am hopeful that this work is just the start of my academic journey, and I am excited to continue my work unpicking the complexities between care and control, always keeping those who matter most to me at the heart of my research.”