Geographies of missing people: processes, experiences, responses

This ESRC funded research project is a collaboration between Grampian Police and Dundee and Glasgow Universities. It starts in February, 2011.

The project has 4 main aims

• To examine the scope, capabilities and capacities of organisations to track missing adult people (aged 18 or over) over space and through time.
• To investigate the experiential geographies of missing people
• To advance conceptual understandings of geographies of 'missingness'
• To advance policy and operational understandings of 'missingness'

The project will examine how different public and third sector agencies involved in searching for missing people mobilize their different knowledge, skills and resources to intervene in missing 'events' and 'processes'. In particular, the project will investigate the spatial/geographical strategies employed by the police, individual tracking officers and families to track missing people at local, national and international levels and how such strategies change and develop over time.

The project will also interview 'returned' missing people via relevant agencies in order to understand more about the experiences of going and staying missing and particularly identify intentional/unintentional uses of space and place in short and long term missing processes. This qualitative information on searching and 'experiential geographies' will be used to critique and enhance current spatial profiling techniques used by police and other agencies involved in formulating search strategies.

The project aims to add value to existing quantitative data held by police researchers on missing events and processes in ways that potentially enable practical actions via search interventions. Using the results of the project will also enable the academic researchers to update and rethink the conceptual basis of the concept of ‘missing’.