Dr Gemma Lucas (she/her)

About me

I work at the intersections of health geographies, cultural and feminist geographies, and the medical humanities. My research develops embodied, creative, and participatory methodologies to explore complex emotional and relational experiences—particularly shame—across different health, educational, and community contexts. I understand research as a relational, collaborative, and care-full practice, where knowledge emerges through movement, creativity, and relationship. 

I am increasingly interested in how we conceptualise, teach, and sustain embodied and creative pedagogies - including within interprofessional education, arts- and movement-based learning, and transdisciplinary settings. This includes thinking about how such pedagogies can contribute to more equitable, meaningful, and imaginative educational futures.

My research is anchored in Moving Shame, a trauma-informed, engaged methodological framework that combines movement practices (yoga, somatics, dance movement psychotherapy) with creative arts-based methods (body mapping, drawing, collage). Co-developed with collaborators who bring expertise in embodied practice and/or lived experience of shame, Moving Shame creates spaces where participants explore the spatial, relational, and affective dimensions of shame through and with the body.

I have facilitated Moving Shame workshops one-to-one and in groups with medical students, healthcare practitioners, therapists, LGBTQ+ communities, and members of the public. These workshops invite reflective, supportive, and often transformative engagement with shame, encouraging forms of connection, agency, and collective meaning-making.

I continue to co-develop and deliver this work with Dr Chloe Asker, and through collaborations with organisations such as Queer Circle and the Wellcome Trust–funded Shame and Medicine project.

Working with colleagues at Duke University School of Medicine, I have also adapted the methodology for interprofessional medical education, examining how shame shapes medical cultures, relational dynamics, and professional identity formation. This strand of my work contributes to emerging conversations about embodied creative pedagogies in health professions education and the importance of trauma-informed, relational approaches to learning.

Teaching and Collaboration

I am an experienced higher education lecturer and teach across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Human Geography, Liberal Arts, and the Medical Humanities. My teaching is grounded in embodied, creative, and participatory pedagogies, drawing on my expertise in trauma-informed movement practices, arts-based methods, and relational approaches to learning.

I co-convene Global Classrooms: Health Humanities and Geographies, an international teaching initiative bringing together students from the University of Exeter, Duke University School of Medicine, UNC Chapel Hill, the University of South Florida, Tampa, and UBC Okanagan. Accredited at Exeter (HASM031), this module uses immersive, dialogic, and embodied pedagogies—including movement-based practice, sensory exercises, and virtual reality—to explore embodiment, health, and care across global contexts. This collaborative classroom fosters transdisciplinary learning, peer connection, and an ethics of reciprocity in international education.

Artistic and Interdisciplinary Practice

My research is also shaped by artistic collaboration. I have worked with artists, yoga practitioners, and psychotherapists on projects exploring how creative practices can support community wellbeing and social justice. With Arts and Culture Exeter, I co-led a project addressing the mental health impacts of racial discrimination through participatory art and collective care.

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.

Research interests

Engaged and participatory research methodologies

Embodiment, emotion, and shame in health and care contexts

Feminist and cultural geographies of the body

Trauma-informed and shame-sensitive research

Embodied and arts-based pedagogies

Interdisciplinary approaches bridging geography and the medical humanities

Geographies of health and wellbeing

Affiliations

Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health

Shame and Medicine project (Wellcome Trust)

Visiting Scholar, Duke University School of Medicine 

Global Classrooms Teaching Fellow