Associate Professor Sophie Tamas

Emotional, feminist, psychoanalytic and non-representational geographies; qualitative, arts-based, autoethnographic, and Indigenous research methods; disability, trauma, and the (mis)uses of personal narrative

• B.I.S. (University of Waterloo), M.A. (Carleton), PhD (Carleton)
• Email Associate Professor Sophie Tamas
• 613-520-2600 ext 3578

• Visit the Website

Biography

As an emotional geographer I focus on the body and the university as spaces shaped by the circulation of feeling, understood as affect, emotion, mood, and atmosphere. I am interested in finding and fostering reparative forms of knowledge production. My work as an interdisciplinary academic and artist is deeply rooted in my life experiences, including the blessings of growing up in northern Inuit and Indigenous communities, the challenges of trauma and disability, and my social location as a small-town mom.

My PhD used arts-based methods to examine the aftermath of domestic abuse. It was followed by a SSHRC postdoc at Queen’s in emotional geographies, and a Banting postdoc here at Carleton, which used scrapbooking and cybercartography to map the spatial effects of leaving abuse. I have recently been on a long medical leave and my availability remains limited.

Research Interests

• Health geographies (academic workers and mental health; pelvic pain; women’s health)
• Emotional geographies (academic, medical, and domestic spaces and practices)
• Creative, feminist, Indigenous, post-qualitative, new materialist, and trauma-informed approaches to knowledge production.

Selected Publications

(2025). Feeling knowing: the nature and purpose of arts-based methods. In M. Kusenbach & M. Pfadenhauer (Eds.), Handbook of Interpretive Research Methods in the Social Sciences. Elgar. P 374-387.

 (2024). Autoethnography is a difficult delivery. International Review of Qualitative Research 18.3, 288-291.

(2022). Autoethnographic reparative pedagogies and academic healing. In N.K. Denzin & M. Giardina, (Eds.), Transformative Visions for Qualitative Inquiry. 16 pages.

(2021). Failing autoethnography. In S. Holman Jones, T. E. Adams, and C. Ellis (Eds.), The Handbook of Autoethnography, 2^nd Edition. Routledge. 30 pages.

with Ruth Tamas, (2021). Conscripted collaborators: Family matters in autoethnography. International Review of Qualitative Research 14(2), 296-301.

(2020). Autogeography. In A. Datta et al, (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies. Routledge, p. 511-519.

Tamas, S. (2019). Tricky Stories: Settler-academic reflections of anti-colonial teaching. Geohumanities 5(2), 376-385.

Tamas, S. (2018). Happy ways: The writing subject. In L. Turner, N. P. Short, and T. Adams (Eds.) International Perspectives on Autoethnographic Research and Practice. Routledge. 245-255.

With Joyce Davidson. (2016). Autism and the ghost of gender. Emotion, Space and Society 19, 59-65.