Assessments of the development of geography as a discipline, and studies of sub‐disciplinary development within geography, have generally focused on the subject matter under study. Consideration has concentrated on topics, theories, methods, and paradigm shifts identified by analyses of published literature. There has been rather less interest in the spatialisation of the practice and performance of the discipline by people and institutions (though there have been exceptions) and equally little attention to the evidence provided by geographical conferences. We address these lacunae in current knowledge through a quantitative study of changing disciplinary endeavour in health geography as evidenced by participation in the International Medical Geography Symposia. For 35 years this biennial meeting has been the flagship conference for health and medical geographers. We have obtained, reviewed, and coded the proceedings of all 17 symposia, analysing the submitted papers by location of symposia, lead authorship, affiliation, and country of authorship. We investigate the globalisation of the sub‐discipline and changes in key institutional involvement. Novel network analysis methods are used to identify changing linkages between research centres. What emerges is a complex sub‐discipline driven by the changing neoliberal context of higher education and marked by both continuities and discontinuities in its practitioner networks.

中文翻译：

---

介绍健康和医学地理：人，地方和变化

对地理学科发展的评估以及对地理学科内学科发展的研究通常集中于所研究的主题。考虑的重点是通过已发表文献的分析确定的主题，理论，方法和范式转换。人们对个人和机构对该学科的实践和绩效进行空间分配的兴趣相对较少（尽管有例外），并且对地理会议提供的证据的关注也很少。我们通过对改变健康地理学科努力的定量研究来解决当前知识中的空白，这通过参加国际医学地理研讨会得到了证明。35年来，这个两年一次的会议一直是健康和医学地理学家的旗舰会议。我们已经获取，审查和编码了所有17个专题讨论会的会议记录，并根据专题讨论会的地点，主要作者，所属单位和作者所在国家/地区对提交的论文进行了分析。我们研究了子学科的全球化以及主要机构参与的变化。新颖的网络分析方法用于识别研究中心之间不断变化的联系。由此产生的是一个复杂的子学科，它受到不断变化的高等教育新自由主义背景的驱动，并以其从业者网络的连续性和不连续性为特征。和作者所在的国家/地区。我们研究了子学科的全球化以及主要机构参与的变化。新颖的网络分析方法用于识别研究中心之间不断变化的联系。由此产生的是一个复杂的子学科，它受到不断变化的高等教育新自由主义背景的驱动，并以其从业者网络的连续性和不连续性为特征。和作者所在的国家/地区。我们研究了子学科的全球化以及主要机构参与的变化。新颖的网络分析方法用于识别研究中心之间不断变化的联系。由此产生的是一个复杂的子学科，它受到不断变化的高等教育新自由主义背景的驱动，并以其从业者网络的连续性和不连续性为特征。