Humanities Research Council Research Articles

COVID-19 IMPACTS ON THE MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING OF RESEARCHERS, PARTNERS, AND RESEARCH COMMUNITIES

BackgroundIn the United Kingdom, over five years, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have made more than to 300 awards under the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and the Newton portfolios. These awards have drawn on AHRC’s research base to address development challenges that are ultimately global challenges, including poverty reduction, global health, climate change, resilience, conflict, displacement, inclusive education, and rapid urbanization. ObjectiveThis paper focuses on data from a selection of projects from both the GCRF and Newton portfolios in order to evaluate the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has on the mental health and wellbeing of individuals and communities.  A focus of the study is on researchers and their families, on research partners and other affiliates as well as within the communities where these projects take place. A particular attention is paid on the impact of COVID-19 on different aspects of life and social practices as well as changes in the perceptions, attitudes and behaviors of researchers as part of and during the research process. MethodsThe data in this project comes from PRAXIS, a £1m research project from the University of Leeds, which covers four main areas of research; namely those of Heritage, Conflict and Displacement, COVID-19 and Climate Change, and Youth Engagement. In this paper, the data presented is only from the COVID-19 Strand that examined 248 projects from both the GCRF and Newton portfolios. The data was gathered via a desk-based assessment, two surveys, twenty-one interviews, as well as twelve case studies. ResultsThe COVID-19 pandemic increased pressure on already strained research systems highlighting some key challenges and issues.  With the pandemic impacts, the sense of isolation and loneliness increased as well as the need for additional mental health support. Mental health concerns were often reported in the context of deteriorating mental health for academics and practitioners involved in the projects. The trauma of the pandemic and its effects led to reports of frustration, disempowerment, lack of agency, sadness, depression, and even symptoms associated with PTSD.   Respondents also described the impact of the lockdowns on productivity and mental health, with many more work hours required to attain a similar level of pre-Covid quality.  For communities, the main impacts of the pandemic were also the lockdowns and their subsequent impact on mental health.  ConclusionAmidst the chaos of the pandemic, there were valuable lessons learned about the need and the method of preserving vulnerable communities as well as maintaining the health of researchers, partners, and communities by balancing the home and work life.

Material Characterisation of William Burges’ Great Bookcase within the Disruption of a Global Pandemic

ABSTRACT This contribution presents the results of a technical investigation on the pigments of William Burges’ Great Bookcase (1859–62), preserved at the Ashmolean Museum. It is the first thorough material investigation of a remarkable piece of Gothic Revival painted furniture, notably an artwork by Burges, whose work has so far received little attention from a technical point of view. This study was developed during the Covid-19 pandemic, which significantly affected the planned research activities since the investigation relied extensively on collaborations with institutions within and beyond the University of Oxford. The disruption caused by the lockdown and other restrictions went far beyond any prediction and led us to redefine the project’s outcome and methodology ‘on the fly’ while maintaining its overall vision. However, thanks to the timeliness of a substantial research grant received from the Capability for Collection Fund (CapCo, Art and Humanities Research Council), we could ultimately turn this research into a unique opportunity to test the potential of recently acquired instruments, namely the Opus Apollo infrared camera and the Bruker CRONO XRF mapping spectrometer. Therefore, besides reporting on the findings, this contribution outlines the strategy adopted and assesses the new equipment’s capability for the non-invasive analysis of complex polychromies.

Maker-centricity and ‘edge-places of creativity’: CARE-full making in a CARE-less world

Susan Luckman, citing Katherine Gibson’s call for a return to ‘the grass-roots work of engaging the community and being open to developing new economies’, advocates a vision of creative industries that builds the affordances of ‘edge-places of creativity’. Luckman’s focus is non-urban localities. Her proposal, nevertheless, could equally apply to the amateur craft groups, community organisations and independent businesspeople that the Arts and Humanities Research Council–funded projects Co-Producing CARE: Community Asset-based Research and Enterprise, and Maker-Centric: Building Place-based, Co-making Communities worked with in deprived inner-city areas in the British Midlands. Both projects were undertaken with Craftspace and other stakeholder organisations, worked collaboratively with community groups, employed co-production processes and combined hand-making with digital fabrication. The aim of each project was to prototype a method with communities that builds agencies (cultural, social, economic, skills-based) through making and could be applied by other groups. While the CARE method was concerned with the affordances of collaborative making, Maker-Centric looked at these through a heritage and placed-based lens. This article examines the potential for local, collaborative, purposeful, social making as an ‘edge-place’ activity for creative enterprise that is inclusive and supportive.

Religious accommodation, agonism, agnosticism in healthcare: A commentary on Joshua Hordern, 'Accommodating religion and belief in healthcare: Political threats, agonistic democracy and established religion'.

Religious accommodation, agonism, agnosticism in healthcare: A commentary on Joshua Hordern, 'Accommodating religion and belief in healthcare: Political threats, agonistic democracy and established religion'.

Understanding collaboration patterns on funded research projects: A network analysis

AbstractThis paper provides an examination of inter-organizational collaboration in the UK research system. Data are collected on organizational collaboration on projects funded by four key UK research councils: Arts and Humanities Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The organizational partnerships include both academic and nonacademic institutions. A collaboration network is created for each research council, and an exponential random graph model is applied to inform on the mechanisms underpinning collaborative tie formation on research council-funded projects. We find that in the sciences, collaborative patterns are much more hierarchical and concentrated in a small handful of actors compared to the social sciences and humanities projects. Institutions that are members of the elite Russell Group (a set of 24 high-ranking UK universities) are much more likely to be involved in collaborations across research councils.

Clinical Legal Education: Human Rights, and Arts and Crafts Cafés

This practice report provides an account of two outreach projects that enabled different community groups, members of staff at Royal Holloway, University of London, and students at Royal Holloway’s Legal Advice Centre, to discuss human rights in an accessible and relatable way, which empowered the delegates, and encouraged open dialogue. At the first event, Royal Holloway and the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association collaborated to host an online Being Human café as part of the Being Human 2020: a Festival of Humanities programme organised and set up annually by the School of Advanced Study, University of London and funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. The café “Afghan Women Small Spaces Café: Sewing Pathways to Human Rights” took place via Zoom. Meeting over Afghan tea and cake, participants - from the public, generally from the Afghan diaspora community and researchers - used mixed participatory methods including artwork, sewing and conversation to explore what everyday habits and material objects tell us about ourselves and each other. Working with these, and other culturally specific lived experiences, Marshall linked her research, on human rights law’s purpose of ensuring universal dignity, equality and rights, to French writer Georges Perec. Following this style of Café, the authors created the Autism Legal Rights Café, in partnership with the Sycamore Trust U.K. At this second event, Marshall’s research on everyday spaces was developed into a short talk about law, everyday spaces, objects and being human at a focused arts and crafts workshop for young women with autism. Particularly during Covid-19 lockdown, it was explored how and why our objects took on a new meaning. This talk included an analysis of Species of Spaces where Perec traced what is truly daily, those everyday habits and material objects of which our lives consist, what goes without saying. Perec claims, although these do not seem to pose any problems, we need to ask what they may tell us about what is important in life, what makes it worth living.

Protocols of Listening

This article presents six separate but connected understandings of a digital platform of listening vocabularies and protocols produced in the context of Listening Across Disciplines II, (LxDII) a cross- and transdisciplinary research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK (AHRC), conducted by the authors from 2018 to 2022. This research project set out to investigate and promote the use of listening across arts, humanities, science, and social science disciplines. To this end it worked with different partners from various fields to observe, co-work, and analyze, and finally to connect and compare different forms of listening. Early on it became clear that one of the main issues in establishing such a cross-disciplinary listening was the lack of a joint vocabulary and thus a means to share processes, methods, and insights. Therefore, it became a central objective to develop a resource of listening vocabularies and protocols that reveal differences as well as similarities and point to ways that connections can be established and methods shared. Subsequently, and to ensure cross-disciplinary and public use, these vocabularies and protocols were organized on an interactive digital platform, enabling browsing between methods and words, and hopefully affording shared approaches and cross-referencing. This article represents a reflection on the background, motivation, processes, and realization of this platform. It does so deliberately from the six listening positions of the research team. In this way it reproduces the project itself, in that it allows each listener their own understanding while connecting them through a shared platform. Please visit the online version of the journal to see and hear video and audio files.

DiSSCo UK: A new partnership to unlock the potential of 137 million UK-based specimens

Between September 2021 and March 2022, a consortium across the twelve nations and regions of the United Kingdom (UK), led by the Natural History Museum (NHM), London, participated in a study to develop the business case and plan to support a national programme of natural science collections digitisation. This work, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), sought to understand the size and diversity of UK natural science collections; establish the readiness of UK institutions to undertake digitisation; and develop training materials to pilot regional digitisation, building on prior investments in digitisation and informatics by the NHM. This presentation sets out the key findings from this work and is presented as a “blueprint” to scale up digitisation and cooperation through a national infrastructure programme: DiSSCo UK. This programme is part of the UK’s contribution to DiSSCo, the Distributed System of Scientific Collections, a partnership of institutions who share a vision to empower science and society, in balance with nature, to make reliable knowledge and evidence about the natural world available to all. Through the Francis Crick Institute and the Turing Institute, the UK has successfully created world-leading medical research and data science collaborations. DiSSCo UK is crafting a business case to do the same for bio- and geodiversity. Our data shows that the UK holds some of the world’s most important natural science collections, with more than 137 million specimens collected from across the globe and stored in more than 90 institutions throughout the country. Firstly, advances in molecular, genetic, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies are enabling new scientific discoveries and new commercial opportunities to be extracted by digitising these collections and making the data available to scientific researchers and commercial venture partners. Secondly, UK collections play a critical and culturally sensitive role in supporting a range of arts and humanities research. These collections continue to shape our culture, our view of ourselves and our place in the world, addressing issues of inclusivity and relevance. Lastly, data from these collections underpin local, regional and national policy-making, providing information not only central to monitoring change in the environment, but also for testing predictions of future change, to ensure UK policies are ‘nature positive’ and evidence-led. Recent work commissioned by the NHM has confirmed an economic value of at least £2 billion with a 7–10 times return on investment from UK collections digitisation with economic opportunities across biodiversity conservation, control of invasive species, medicine discovery, agricultural research and development, and mineral exploitation (Popov et al. 2021). Over time, we propose to build DiSSCo UK out to not only digitise our national collection but to create a national infrastructure that supports real-time integration between biological, human health, meteorological, geographic (e.g., land use) and geological data. It will provide a dynamic view of the state of the world’s biodiversity, its threats and human well-being; facilities to support large-scale genomic and chemical analysis of the UK natural science collections, including an on-demand bio-sample service, promoting legal and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) access to genetic resources for the benefit of research and society; a coordination office to support the activities of a distributed network of UK organisations holding, generating and analysing natural science data; and an adequate annual budget to support core staffing, workshops, outreach, scholarships, sabbaticals, training activities and other running costs.

Mobile Arts for Peace (MAP): creating art-based communication structures between young people and policy-makers from local to national levels

ABSTRACT This article will provide an overview of how the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) project Mobile Arts for Peace (MAP) has attempted to explore the use of interdisciplinary art-based practices for peacebuilding in Rwanda. In particular, we will detail how performance has been used to create a two-way system of communication between young people and policy-makers based on the issues that young people face towards developing an approach to teaching and learning informed by and with young people.

Introducing the Digital Humanities in Ireland Landscape Report Dataset

The UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Network was jointly funded in July 2020 by the Irish Research Council (IRC) and the UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the ground-breaking Collaboration in Digital Humanities Networking Grant Scheme. The joint aims of the Network were to: a) undertake research and consultation towards the implementation of a permanent UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association; and b) to develop a clear roadmap for collaboration in the field between the two countries. An ancillary objective of the Irish Network members is to provide an up-to-date evaluation of the role and scope of Digital Humanities in Ireland, both past and present, to facilitate longer-term thinking about Digital Humanities so that we might optimise future developments in the field, including the nascent UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association. To that end, the respective partners are developing a Digital Humanities in Ireland Landscape Report. The research informing the Landscape Report will be delivered in two phases. The initial phase took place between March and September 2021 and comprised the identification via desk research, collection and collation of data pertaining to Digital Humanities entities in Ireland. The second phase of the data gathering/collection exercise entails the presentation of the preliminary dataset to the wider Digital Humanities community for input and suggestions. To that end, we have created an Open Science Framework (OSF) repository. This contribution introduces the Digital Humanities in Ireland Landscape Report dataset, its methodology and primary sources and offers some preliminary observations and analysis. It concludes with some suggestions for potential use cases and further directions for the dataset.

“Bloody amazing really”: voices from Scotland’s public libraries in lockdown

PurposeThe research examined Scottish public libraries and the libraries' response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic of 2020–2021. The research focussed particularly around the way that the libraries helped to support community resilience and cohesion during periods of lockdown. The study considered issues around the closure of services in March 2020, digital services, the loss of physical library spaces and governance models. The research presents the voice of service managers rather than being a user study. The research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UKRI (United Kingdom Research and Innovation), as a part of the council's scheme to provide response to the pandemic of 2020.Design/methodology/approachThis was an exploratory study examining how Scottish public library services responded to the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Three methods were deployed in the investigation. First, the gathering social media and other web-based content from library services over the months March–September 2020 (amounting to over four thousands snips of content) were analysed thematically. Second, 19 semi-structured interviews with service managers across Scotland were conducted. These were recorded, transcribed and analysed. These elements formed the cornerstone of the research but were supported by a short survey distributed to all public library services in Scotland focussed on e-lending during lockdown.FindingsFindings are presented in respect of the lessons to be learnt from the closure of physical services and the migration to digital only provision, the contribution made to supporting communities, health and well-being, the importance of the balance of physical and digital library services around governance models for library services, as well as around the process of reopening services. This research explores how staff responded to this unparalleled situation, how the staff maintained close relationship with the communities the staff serve, what services themselves learnt through lockdown, and how the staff's management practices adapted. The findings present voices from Scottish libraries during 2020.Research limitations/implicationsThe research presents a snapshot of activities during a period of fast-moving change. The research, therefore, presents a snapshot of March–December 2020, which is, however, an extremely important snapshot. The first lockdown was perhaps most interesting to study from a research perspective because the authors witnessed, real-time, how the staff responded and reacted (with lessons learnt and applied in subsequent regional or national lockdowns later in 2020 and in the 2021). The second lockdown and subsequent periods were outside the scope of this research.Practical implicationsRecommendations are offered around the need for a national conversation about digital content provision in public libraries and the exploration of possibilities of a national approach, the role libraries have as digital enablers (in supporting effort to overcome the digital divide in society), the crucial nature of continued strong advocacy for public libraries, the importance of the library as a physical space, and on how to maintain the flexibility, agility and autonomy which emerged during lockdown.Social implicationsThe research presents strong testimony about the social value of public libraries as free, safe and public spaces within communities. It also highlights the continued digital divide which exists in many places and the important role that public libraries have in being digital enablers for many members of the public. The closeness of library service staff to users is strongly evidenced in the testimony from managers as is the need for parent organisation (local authorities or in culture or leisure trusts) to recognise more fully the breadth of services the public library provides and how these are “essential” for many users.Originality/valueThe value and distinctiveness of this research lies in the fact that the research captured the voices, thoughts and perceptions of Scotland’s public libraries during the period of lockdown in 2020. The evidence gathered suggests important conversations are required around equity of e-lending provision, the role of libraries as digital enablers, the balance between physical and digital provision and around the ways libraries are managed (directly by local authorities or in culture trusts). The research affords lessons for public library provision beyond Scotland with many issues being transferable to other contexts.

Institutional Readiness for Community– University Alliances

The concept of ‘readiness’ in collaborative research is almost exclusively framed and evaluated with respect to the preparedness of a community. We argue that the concept of readiness should be flipped to consider institutions, and thus ‘institutional readiness’, rather than solely assessing a community’s capacity to engage in research projects. To investigate institutional readiness in Canada, we surveyed publications resulting from projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s (SSHRC) Community–University Research Alliances (CURA) programme to look at the frequency of mention of limitations related to institutional readiness versus those related to on-the-ground project specifics. Our findings suggest that institutional factors are major barriers to collaborative research and provide perspective on areas where readiness for repatriation could be built.

A New Dietary Self-Monitoring App to Improve Adherence to the 2019 Canada’s Food Guide: Protocol for a Feasibility Study

ObjectivesThis study aims to describe the acceptability, usability, and feasibility testing of the iCANPlate smartphone application, an innovative app that resembles the 2019 Canada's Food Guide (CFG), at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia.MethodsIn Part 1, the acceptability and usability of iCANPlate will be explored using a mixed-method approach. Included participants will be healthy adults (n = 10) from all over Canada with lower levels of health literacy and with the intention of changing their eating behaviours. The eligible participants will be using the app for three weeks and will be surveyed using Technology Acceptance Model-3 (TAM-3), System Usability Scale (SUS), and semi-structured interviews. In part 2, a 6-week feasibility trial will be conducted using iCANPlate versus a standard traditional dietary self-monitoring app (Cronometer Software Inc. Canada) to establish feasibility markers in data collection. Participants (n = 80) will be randomized to the intervention (iCANPlate group) and the control group (Cronometer group) in a 1:1 ratio. Participants will be included based on the same inclusion criteria in Part 1 and will be asked to record their food and beverages intakes for 6 weeks. We will also compare the efficacy of using the iCANPlate and Cronometer using the following measures: User version Mobile Application Rating Scale; SUS; TAM-3; Healthy Eating Food Index (HEFI)-2019; Healthy Eating and Weight Self-Efficacy. Quantitative data will be analysed using descriptive statistics and paired t-test and qualitative data will be analysed using thematic analysis with a deductive approach.ResultsN/AConclusionsThis study will develop and test the iCANPlate aimed to improve adherence to dietary self-monitoring in healthy adults. The results of Part 1 of the study will be used to further refine the iCANPlate before it is launched in the second part. This study will allow us to determine the iCANPlate's usefulness, feasibility, and acceptability for dietary self-monitoring in adults with lower levels of health literacy.Funding SourcesSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Household Food Insecurity in Middle- and High-Income Countries Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

ObjectivesThe impact of the pandemic on the prevalence of food insecurity is unclear given the potentially contradictory effects of shocks such as lockdowns versus stabilizers such as income supplements. We examined changes in the prevalence of household food insecurity in five countries from before (2019) to during the pandemic (2020). MethodsData were drawn from cross-sectional surveys conducted in Australia, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US) in November/December of 2018,2019, and 2020. Adults aged 18–99 years were surveyed annually (2018: n = 22,731,2019: n = 19,274,2020: n = 21,323). Household food insecurity in the past 12 months was assessed using the Household Food Security Survey Module. Weighted logit models examined changes in the prevalence of living in households affected by food insecurity from 2019 to 2020, adjusting for the prevalence in 2018 and demographic characteristics. Weighted generalized logit models examined changes in the severity of food insecurity. ResultsAdults in Mexico had a higher probability of living in food-insecure households in 2020 compared to 2019 (β = 0.14, p = 0.02). In contrast, decreases in the probability of living in food-insecure households in 2020 compared to 2019 were observed in Australia (β = –0.21, p < .001) and Canada (β = –0.14, p = 0.03). In the UK and the US, no important changes in the prevalence of food insecurity were observed (UK: β = –0.11, p = 0.11, US: β = 0.05, p = 0.42). Changes in the severity of food insecurity within countries are also evident. ConclusionsChanges in the prevalence of household food insecurity during the pandemic appear to differ across countries. Further analyses will contextualize these differences in relation to varied policy responses to the pandemic, as well as changes in prevalence among subgroups such as those with low incomes. Funding SourcesA. Pepetone received a stipend from a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)/Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council/Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Healthy Cities Research Training Platform. Funding for the International Food Policy Study was provided by a CIHR Project Grant, with additional support from Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), and a CIHR-PHAC Applied Public Health Chair held by D. Hammond.

Affective Atmosphere: A Non-Representational Method of Devising Film Performance and Fiction

Affective atmosphere is a new method of directing film performance and producing experimental fiction in the tradition of art cinema, which emerged from a wider practice research project entitled Affective Cinema, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. As an approach to filmmaking, affective atmosphere prioritises the becoming of an event over a narrative/production plan, and uses experimental production strategies to maximise the potential of spontaneous directorial decisions and the unpredictable flow of reality for generating alternative narrative/dramatic film structures. The method is rooted in practitioner know-how stimulated by reflection, but also informed by a synthesis of the key concepts of Deleuze and Guattari, and theoretical writings on atmosphere (Böhme, Griffero) and film performance (Benjamin, Del Río). In this way, the project meaningfully applies philosophical concerns to filmmaking, expanding, in the process, on theoretical understanding, while embedding this knowledge tacitly in artistic practice. Furthermore, the research leads to the development of a set of applicable film production methods, unified by a clear rationale and a creative purpose linked to demonstrable outcomes.

Anthropocene and the Gothic: An Interview with Justin Edwards

&#x0D; Justin Edwards is a professor in the Division of Literature and Languages at the University of Stirling. Previously Chair of English at the University of Surrey and professor and head of English at Bangor University, he was elected by-fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge in 2005. Between 1995 and 2005, he taught at the University of Montreal and the University of Copenhagen, where he was appointed as an associate professor in 2002. He holds an Affiliate Professorship in U.S. Literature at the University of Copenhagen and in 2016-2017 he was a Fulbright scholar at Elon University, North Carolina. He is also a member of the Peer Review College for the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and a Trustee of the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA). Justin’s contribution to the study of Gothic literature started with Gothic Passages: Racial Ambiguity and the American Gothic, which examines the development of U.S. Gothic literature alongside 19th-century discourses of passing and racial ambiguity. In Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National Literature, he continued in the area by examining how collective stories about national identity and belonging tend to be haunted by artifice.&#x0D;

Surveying Healthcare Workers to Improve the Design, Wearer Experience and Sustainability of PPE Isolation Gowns

This protective clothing design project responds to the urgent need for research into the redesign of personal protective equipment (PPE) isolation gowns, to be more fit for purpose and reusable to enhance the experiences of healthcare workers treating patients with COVID-19 and variants. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) the research addresses the engineering question: “What new materials, design and manufacturing approaches should we start to consider in preparation for pandemics e.g. reusable PPE to replace single use?” The article focuses on the online questionnaire/ survey, its main findings and the ‘participatory clothing design’ methodology which prioritises the lived experiences and expressed needs of healthcare workers wearing disposable and reusable PPE in acute care scenarios. Research methods include literature and gown reviews, selected interviews and survey directed at nurses, to acquire first-hand qualitative data about the impact of current gown design and procurement policies on wearers. Selected results and commentary from the ongoing survey are presented and thematically analysed to inform the development of reusable gowns. Semi-structured interviews with clinical leads and caregivers, as well as responses from users, will be important to integrate expertise in fashion, textile and uniform design, clinical practice, and manufacturing. Further design will be based on a complex design brief that balances the needs of wearers and critical care providers while considering regulations, protection, comfort, sustainability, and cost. This research focuses on enhancing an overlooked area of critical care clothing and the people who wear it while reducing its detrimental impact on the planet.

Storying Autobiographical Experiences with Gender-Based Violence

In earlier work1 collaborative autoethnography was identified as a viable methodology for researching stories that drew on lived experiences with domestic abuse. Collaborative autoethnography offers a method of working with women outside of academia who have experienced gender-based violence (GBV) and including them as co-researchers whose writings can and should be valued as academic research. In this article, also a collaborative autoethnography, the authors explore methods for storying autobiographical experiences of GBV as a potential way of reclaiming stories whilst navigating the legal, ethical, and moral dilemmas sometimes associated with autobiographical writing that might help to make these stories less difficult to write, and also read, avoiding stereotypes that have led to critique around battle-weary narratives of GBV2 and bad romance tropes.3 The authors argue that evocative texts drawing on lived experiences but layering the real with the imaginary, the remembered with the fictitious, can be more accessible to read and write. Cook and Fonow4 argue that feminist work is often creative and spontaneous, and this article will detail writing methods that were shared by the authors in creative workshops with survivors of GBV as part of a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).5 They also share examples of their own stories that have been inspired by this approach as well as the challenges and motivations of working in this way.

Contributors

Ilana M. Blumberg is professor of English literature at Bar Ilan University in Israel and author, most recently, of the memoir Open Your Hand: Teaching as a Jew, Teaching as an American (2018). She has won teaching awards from University of Pennsylvania and Michigan State University and is currently a recipient of an Israel Science Foundation grant entitled Postsecular George Eliot.Rosalind Buckton-Tucker studied at King's College, London, and the University of Leicester, UK, and holds a PhD in American literature. Her main research interests are twentieth-century British and American literature, travel literature, and the pedagogy of literature and creative writing, and she has published a variety of articles and book chapters in these fields as well as presenting numerous papers at international conferences. She has taught in universities in Kuwait, Oman, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran, and has also worked as a freelance journalist and editor in the UAE and Oman. She enjoys writing fiction, memoirs, and travel articles.Elizabeth Effinger is associate professor of English at the University of New Brunswick, where she teaches British Romanticism with special interests in William Blake, the intersections of Romantic science and literature, the Anthropocene, and human-animal studies. She coedited (with Chris Bundock) William Blake's Gothic Imagination: Bodies of Horror (2018). She was principal investigator of Erasing Frankenstein, a SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council)-funded public humanities outreach activity that transformed Shelley's 1818 novel into a book-length erasure poem in collaboration with incarcerated and nonincarcerated citizens. For more on the project, visit erasingfrankenstein.org.Moira Fitzgibbons is professor of English at Marist College. Her most recent work includes an edition of “The Merchant's Tale” in The Medieval Disability Sourcebook (2020).Michael Keenan Gutierrez is teaching associate professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Trench Angel (2015) and his work appears in the Guardian, the Delmarva Review, the Collagist, Scarab, the Pisgah Review, Untoward, the Boiler, Crossborder, and Public Books.Angela Laflen teaches digital rhetoric and professional writing at California State University, Sacramento. Her work has appeared in Computers and Composition and Assessing Writing, among other venues.Laci Mattison is assistant professor at Florida Gulf Coast University in the Department of Language and Literature, where she teaches courses on twentieth-century, Victorian, and contemporary literature. She is one of the general editors for Bloomsbury's Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism series. For this series, she has coedited volumes on Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. Alongside Derek Ryan, she has also coedited a special issue of Deleuze Studies titled Deleuze, Virginia Woolf, and Modernism (2013) and has published articles and book chapters on Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, H. D., Mulk Raj Anand, and Vladimir Nabokov.Kelly Neil is professor of English at Spartanburg Methodist College, a small liberal arts institution located in the upstate of South Carolina. She received her PhD in English literature from the University of California, Davis, where she studied early modern literature and gender. She has published in such journals as Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies and This Rough Magic. She is currently coediting a collection of essays on teaching Shakespeare to nonmajors.Sarah Ann Singer is assistant professor in the Department of English at University of Central Florida. Her work appears in College English, Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Medical Humanities, and Peitho.Rachel Tait-Ripperdan is associate librarian at Florida Gulf Coast University. She received her master's degree in library science from Florida State University and her master's degree in history from Florida Gulf Coast University. She serves as library liaison to the Departments of Language and Literature, History, Communication, Philosophy, and Religion. Her research interests include information literacy instruction, collection development, and graphic novels and manga in the academic classroom.Theresa Tinkle (she/her/hers) is a medievalist by training, a teacher committed to supporting students’ development and ambitions, and a disability studies scholar. Her most recent book is Gender and Power in Medieval Exegesis (2010). She has published widely on medieval English and Latin literature, gender, religion, and manuscript culture. She is currently director of the Gayle Morris Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is engaged in antiracist work, writing to learn, writing in the disciplines, and writing program assessment.

Notes on Contributing Authors

Other| April 01 2022 Notes on Contributing Authors Ethnomusicology (2022) 66 (1): vii–viii. https://doi.org/10.5406/21567417.66.1.02 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Notes on Contributing Authors. Ethnomusicology 1 January 2022; 66 (1): vii–viii. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/21567417.66.1.02 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressEthnomusicology Search Advanced Search J Susan Baker is a senior research fellow with the University of Queensland, Australia. She is a social-developmental psychologist focusing on language and intergroup communication. Her publications are in the area of acculturation, second/heritage language learning, communication accommodation, intercultural relations, and doctor-patient communication.Polina Dessiatnitchenko is an Assistant Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, where she is teaching ethnomusicology and musicology courses. She completed her PhD in ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto in 2017, where she was awarded the Garfield Weston Fellowship and Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Doctoral Graduate Scholarship for her doctoral research on Azerbaijani mugham. Polina has been working on her first monograph while holding a Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University's Department of Music from 2018 until 2021. In addition to her current teaching at Waseda University, she designed and taught her own courses at the University of... You do not currently have access to this content.