Dr Gemma Lucas (she/her)

About me

I am currently a Lecturer in Human Geography and I work transdisciplinarily to teach and lead on modules across UG and PGT programmes in Geography, Liberal Arts and the Medical Humanities. My expertise is in creative and embodied pedagogies and methodologies, health geographies, feminist geographies, and the medical humanities, with a particular focus on embodied, creative, and relational approaches to researching and learning about health related topics.

My research centres on shame in health and care contexts. Through my work with the Wellcome Trust funded Shame and Medicine Project, I collaborate with interdisciplinary colleagues across the UK and USA to explore how shame shapes experiences of illness, care and medical training. 

Across both my research and teaching, I approach knowledge as relational, embodied, and co-produced. I am particularly interested in how creative and participatory approaches can support more equitable, reflective, and reflexive ways of learning and knowing.

I am increasingly focused on how we conceptualise, teach, and sustain embodied and creative pedagogies within transdisciplinary contexts, and on how these approaches can contribute to more equitable, meaningful, and imaginative educational futures.

Research

My research develops embodied, creative methodologies and pedagogies to explore emotional and relational dimensions of health and care, with a particular focus on shame in medical and healthcare contexts.

I developed Moving Shame, a trauma-informed methodological framework that combines movement-based practices (including yoga, somatics, and dance movement psychotherapy) with arts-based methods such as body mapping, drawing, and collage. This approach creates structured yet flexible spaces for participants to explore the spatial, relational, and affective dimensions of shame through the body.

Working in collaboration with colleagues at Duke University School of Medicine and through the Shame and Medicine project, I have adapted this work for interprofessional healthcare education, examining how shame shapes clinical learning environments, professional identity formation, and cultures of care.

This research contributes to growing international conversations about health professions education, trauma-informed and relational methodologies and pedagogies and the role of embodiment and affect in medical training and healthcare.

I am currently developing further research on shame and medicine, including the role of embodied methodologies in supporting reflective practice, ethical care, and wellbeing in healthcare settings.

Teaching and Collaboration

I am an experienced higher education Lecturer and teach across core and optional undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Human Geography, Liberal Arts, and the Medical Humanities. My teaching integrates research-led insights from health geographies and medical humanities, alongside embodied and creative pedagogies. 

I created and co-convene Global Classrooms: Health Humanities and Geographies (HASM031), an international module developed in collaboration with partners including Duke University School of Medicine, UNC Chapel Hill, the University of South Florida, and UBC Okanagan. This module brings together students across disciplines to explore embodiment, health, and care through immersive, dialogic, and movement-based learning practices in both virtual and in-person learning environments.

PhD supervision

Please contact me directly if you would like to discuss PhD supervision for a project that relates to my areas of interest and expertise.

Current: 

2026 - Meg Searle, PhD Creative Arts in Education, Choreographing the Self: Embodied pedagogies and reflective practice in Somatic
Community Movement Education.

Research interests

• health geographies and medical humanities
• shame, emotion, and embodiment in health and care
• trauma-informed and relational pedagogies in healthcare education
• embodied and arts-based methodologies
• interprofessional and transdisciplinary education
• feminist and cultural geographies of the body

Affiliations

• Member, Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health
• Collaborator, Shame and Medicine Project
• Visiting Scholar, Duke University School of Medicine
• Global Classrooms Teaching Fellow

Background

I hold degrees in English (King’s College London), a dual Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Gender Studies (Universities of Oviedo and Hull), and an MRes in Critical Human Geographies (University of Exeter) and a PhD in Human Geography (University of Exeter).

I am also a qualified trauma-informed yoga teacher, and my movement practice continues to inform both my research and teaching.