Author Archives: Nicole Brown

Women in Music and Research: an Interdisciplinary Feminist Research Hub

Source: MPotočnik

On 25 May 2022, the F-List launched its new Gender in Music Research Hub, which aims to connect feminist researchers from all disciplines, who share an interest in music. The doors are now open: all researchers, wishing to join other feminist researchers, who investigate the under-representation of women (including all who identify as women) and gender minorities (women*) in the music sector, can create an F-Listing, under the category “Music Researcher.” The community will share everyone’s research, meet to discuss relevant issues, and explore opportunities for collaboration.

How did it all start?

In 2020, Vick Bain launched the F-List for Music, which builds is activism, advocacy, and drive for change on research, “into gender inequality for female and gender minority musicians,” to pursue the vision of “women in the music industry will be able to more successfully start and sustain their careers in music for longer because of The F-List.” Since 2021, the idea of an inclusive research community, connecting feminist and practice researchers start to emerge, and it all came together on 25 May 2022, with a rich demonstration of the synergies in research and music practices coming together.

What kind of research?

Through an inclusive approach (avoiding the narrow reading of academic research in REF terms), we combine feminist and practice research, across many disciplines. To illustrate the richness of the research community, we started the day with talks from the women on the Hub’s Steering Group (all of whom can be contacted, if you are interested to learn more about their research, or want to explore collaborative opportunities):

Vick Bain on Gendered Precarious Working in the UK Music Industry
Dr Jo Collinson-Scott on Songwriting-as-Research as/into Feminist Methodology
Sophie Daniels on Non-commercial Applications for Songwriting: Searching for Equality
Dr Laura Hamer and Dr Helen Minors Introducing WMLON: Women’s Leadership Online Network
Dr Linda Jankowska and Katherine Young on Co-composition in Boundarymind as a Feminist Methodology
Professor Samantha Parsley on In the Key of She: Women, Technology and Cultural Production and
Dr Metka Potočnik on Defining Music: a Feminist Critique of IP Law.

Just another conference?

It was a community-making day. In the afternoon, we heard from the community of Selextorhood, and musical talent at the School of Performing Arts, who will need our support now, more than ever. This hybrid event connected the audience in the Black Box Theatre, with audiences at home, through music and sharing of the lived experience. In two musical sessions, we heard music and origin stories of the women, across the globe:

On the piano, playing from her “Train on Fire” Annabelle Revak was accompanied by Lottie Grey, Lauren Paige Harding and Emily Sandford (all with SoPA).
On the guitar, Hannah Rose Platt.
On the piano, Anjali Perinparaja, aka Pokkisham.
On the piano, Sophie Daniels, aka Liberty’s Mother.
Recorded, and multimedia, Eva Petrič.
Recorded, and via link, Dr Catherine Davies, aka The Anchoress.

The golden thread was music, written by women*, for women*, to be shared with all. The lived experience driving the music includes women fighting for equal rights under the law, violence and sexual assault, baby loss, connection with the world and fight for individual voice and freedom. As researchers, we draw on this music, and its power, to build an inclusive, accessible, and equal world for all women*.

How does law connect to feminist or practice research?

Researching intellectual property (IP) law through a feminist lens is not a traditional route. As such, it can be an isolating path. More than that, researchers in the field do not use language, which is accessible to the community: the artists. This excludes the artists from fully participating in any inquiry into IP law (does it work, should it be changed, or how is it to change). To change that, I am combining the feminist inquiry into IP law, in particular the concepts of music and authorship in copyright, with an interdisciplinary method: working with practice research and music, to add a multi-dimensional inquiry into IP law.

What’s next?

If anything, that has been written here, interests you: please reach out! Connect with us via Twitter, email or by creating a Music Researcher F-Listing. By growing our community, we will support our advocacy for change.

References and links to follow up

The UK Directory of Female+ Musicians (with over 5,000 listings): https://thef-listmusic.uk.
The F-List Gender in Music Research Hub: https://thef-listmusic.uk/what-we-do/the-f-list-research-hub/.
Vick Bain: https://vbain.co.uk.
Research Excellence Framework is used in the UK, to assess the academic quality and rigour of research done at Higher Education (HE) Institutions: https://www.ref.ac.uk.
Includes: Bain, Daniels, Collinson-Scott, Hamer, Jankowska, Parsley, Mimi Harmer (https://twitter.com/mirandaharmer) and Potočnik.
Academic profile: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/busman/staff/phd/profiles/vick-bain.html.
Dr Jo Collinson Scott: https://research-portal.uws.ac.uk/en/persons/jo-scott.
Sophie Daniels: https://www.icmp.ac.uk/about-icmp/tutors/sophie-daniels.
Dr Laura Hamer: https://www.open.ac.uk/people/lah529.
Dr Helen Minors: https://www.kingston.ac.uk/staff/profile/dr-helen-julia-minors-39/
Project website: https://fass.open.ac.uk/research/projects/wmlon.
Dr Linda Jankowska: http://lindajankowska.com.
Katherine Young: http://music.emory.edu/home/people/biography/young-katherine.html.
Project website: https://www.boundarymind.com.
Professor Samantha Parsley: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/persons/samantha-parsley.
Project website: https://inthekeyofshe.org.
Dr Metka Potočnik: https://researchers.wlv.ac.uk/m.potocnik.
A feminist DJ collective, based in Birmingham: http://selextorhood.com. We were joined by the founder Holly Hollister and Jae Tallawah.
We were joined by Teegan Crawford (https://thef-listmusic.uk/listing/teegan-rose/), Naomi Cunningham, and guided by Dr Maren Hancock (https://twitter.com/marenhancock).
SoPA is based in Walsall, part of the University of Wolverhampton: https://www.wlv.ac.uk/schools-and-institutes/faculty-of-arts-business-and-social-sciences/school-of-performing-arts/.
Hanna Platt: https://www.icmp.ac.uk/about-icmp/tutors/hannah-rose-platt. Artist’s website: https://www.hannahroseplatt.com.
Anjali Perinparaja: https://www.icmp.ac.uk/about-icmp/tutors/anjali-perinparaja.
Twitter: @PokkishamSongs.
Artist’s website: http://www.sophiedanielsmusic.com.
Artist’s website: https://www.eva-petric-evacuate.com.
Dr Catherine Davies: https://www.icmp.ac.uk/about-icmp/tutors/catherine-anne-davies.
Artist’s website: http://theanchoress.co.uk.
For several publications on Fem-IP, see: https://researchers.wlv.ac.uk/m.potocnik/publications or email m.potocnik@wlv.ac.uk.
If you are interest to collaborate on this, please do reach out (Twitter: @drmpWOLF or email: m.potocnik@wlv.ac.uk).
F-List (@theflistmusic) or any of the individual researchers, named in the blog (@vickbain, @SophieDMusic, @drmpWOLF).

Image info: from left to right: Sophie Daniels, Dr Metka Potočnik, Vick Bain, taken at the F-List Gender in Music Research Hub launch on 25 May 2022, at the Performance Hub Walsall, the University of Wolverhampton (with the courtesy of Sophie Daniels and Ben Mantle)

1.10. Architecture of slowness: reflecting on the actions of historical repetitions and loops

Seminar on the 6th July 2022

Source: MButcher

Architecture of slowness: reflecting on the actions of historical repetitions and loops

The presentation focuses on two of Butcher’s recent design projects: the Silt House and Monument to Superstudio. The central aim of this focus is to present how the methodologies used in the design of these works offer alternative architectural design processes to certain contemporary architectural discourses and practices that have emerged from specific philosophical legacies of Modernity. These discourses and practices continue to promote a need for technological progress and efficiency in the design and construction of architectures. This exists in the way the profession of architecture should place greater emphasis on certain design processes focused on computation and cybernetic discourse. These processes not only reduce the space and time for critical reflection but also seek tight allegiance with determinist logics of the market, to drive efficiency in the production of architecture.

As a means of questioning this, the presentation aims to explore how one might propose an architecture of slowness, a concept that, emerged from a reading of Bruno Latour in his essay An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto’ where the philosopher invites us to acknowledge that the ‘time of time […] has passed ’(Latour, 472) and that with this acknowledgement we must embrace a slowness so we can look around, feel and see the world in order to be more aware as we move forward. To help manifest this notion of slowness the chapter will focus on different methodologies of design that seek direct reciprocity with, and reflection on, historical architectures. These processes include performative modes of drawing that seek to mime and re-enact historical works of architecture and art.

Bruno Latour, ‘An Attempt at a “Compositionist Manifesto”,’ 471-490.

Matthew Butcher is an academic and designer. His work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2009 and 2011), The Architecture Foundation Gallery, London (2011); The Architectural Association, London (2011); Prague Quadrennial, Prague (2011); V&A Museum, London (2012); Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York (2012) and Betts Project, London (2020). In 2020 His work was included in the Architecture Foundation’s publication New Architects 4 which showcased the work of the best architectural designers and practices currently working in the UK. Butcher has contributed articles and papers for journals including Conditions, Architecture Research Quarterly (ARQ), the RIBA Journal and Architecture Today. He was Guest Editor, along with Luke Pearson, of the special issue of Architectural Design (AD) titled Re-Imagining the Avant-Garde: revisiting the architecture of the 1960s and 1970s (2019) and editor of the book Expanding Fields of Architectural Discourse and Practice: Curated Works from the P.E.A.R Journal published by UCL Press (2020).

Subscribe to the recordings:
Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

The Practice As Research network with its resources is free and always will be, but it does of course incur costs to run and to keep it running. If you use it and benefit, enjoy it and would like to keep it going, please, consider leaving something in the tip jar. Thank you!

The Pursuit of Excellence: The Hacked Barbie

Images of Barbie dolls that have been manipulated and changed.

Source: FManfredi

PAR network member Federica Manfredi shares The Hacked Barbie.

This post is based on the project ‘EXCEL – The Pursuit of Excellence. Biotechnologies, enhancement and body capital in Portugal’, founded by the Foundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (PTDC/SOC-ANT/30572/2017) at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais – Universidade de Lisboa with the PI Chiara Pussetti.

“La Barbie hackerata” [The Hacked Barbie] is a workshop series and a dissemination activity from the project “Excel – The Pursuit of Excellence” (www.excelproject.eu) that investigates non-therapeutic and long terms body interventions aiming to enhance the social performativity in the Portuguese society.

Research shows that cosmetic and body practices are connected with pressures and logics of excellences following hegemonic and post-colonial models of beauty, based on discriminations of gender, age, sexual orientation, the color of the skin or the shape of the eyes.

The Hacked Barbie has been organized for the first time at the World Anthropology Day 2021 as methodological experiment to interrogate participants about body’s perceptions, its modifications and body-performances in daily life. The goal was to stimulate an anthropological gaze on daily practices directed to bodies, inviting participants to re-created their corporeality on a doll in a guided-process: which body-interventions can make the Barbie, a symbol of gendered perfection, more similar to me? In other words, how do I manipulate and construct my self through my body? What models and social pressures guide my choices, mould the relationship with my body and intervene in my bodily social performance?

From the first workshop, other 5 editions collected over 63 voices of participants from Italy, Portugal, Germany, United Kingdom and Brazil, during online and in-person meetings. We discussed cosmetic surgery, tattoos, anti-aging treatments, epilation, clothing choices and diet regimes under the entanglement of social excellence and personal well-being. Working sessions revealed gendered, aged, political, cultural and hide meanings related to body interventions, as well as fragilities and emotional negotiations with perceived social pressures on how to properly perform through the body.

Recent Covid-experiences crossed childhood episodes in participants’ narrations: through our works on the metaphorical plastic-flesh, the dialogue focused on disparities for the access of body treatments, gender discriminations and the pressures we experienced as teenagers, women, workers and members of a society supposed to pursuit idealistic colonial and hierarchical models of beauty, perfection and excellence.

For more information check out the following links:

The Pursuit of Excellence
Excel YouTube channel
Excel Facebook page

Federica Manfredi is a doctoral researcher in Medical Anthropology at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. She explores contemporary extreme body interventions, especially body suspensions, with co-participated and experimental methodologies that allow to go beyond a logo-centric logic of communication. She is interested in pain, biohacking, tattoos and altered state of consciousness, explored through practice-based qualitative methodologies.

In conversation 7: Dr Hakan Ergül

The “In conversation” series aims to demonstrate the wealth, breadth and depth of what constitutes Practice As Research.

In this episode, Dr Nicole Brown talks to Dr Hakan Ergül.

Dr Hakan Ergül is a Lecturer in Media Studies in the UCL Knowledge Lab of the Department of Culture, Communication & Media at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. Hakan received his PhD in 2006 from the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University, Japan, with my 5-years ethnographic inquiry on Japanese television production.

Hakan’s short stories have appeared in a number of literary journals, and he is the author of Dedicated to Chrysanthemum (in TR: Krizanteme Adanmis, 2003) and Where Do the Noises Come From? (TR: Sesler Nereden Geliyor? 2009), anthology of short stories. His most recent books include Popularizing Japanese TV (author, Routledge 2019) and Universities in the Neoliberal Era (co-editor, Palgrave 2017).

Hakan’s current research examines the role of traditional and digital communication technologies in everyday life of vulnerable groups, including children, refugees, and urban poor from ethnographic perspective.

Subscribe to the recordings:
Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

In conversation 6: Dr Helen Ross

The “In conversation” series aims to demonstrate the wealth, breadth and depth of what constitutes Practice As Research.

In this episode, Dr Nicole Brown talks to Dr Helen Ross.

Dr Helen Ross is a fully qualified Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) and alongside providing support to other professionals and undertaking research, she currently works part time as a SEN teacher in a mainstream school. Helen is also Chair of the Wiltshire Dyslexia Association, where she supports the running of events, provides expert advice on pedagogy and contributes to the Association social media networks. She has recently become a Trustee of the British Dyslexia Association.

For more information about her work and her achievements, check out her web site.

Subscribe to the recordings:
Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

Ageism and the mature professional dancer

Image of a dancer wearing red pointe shoes in red dust. Photograph taken whilst filming in the outback of SW Queensland.

Source: SYork-Price

In her “Ageism and the mature professional dancer” research PAR network member Dr Sonia York-Pryce, a mature professional dancer herself, investigated the role of professional dancers who extend beyond the industry expectations of acceptable age and analysed the contribution that they are making to current dialogues relating to ageism within Western dance culture. Sonia collaborated with mature professional dancers to produce dance films celebrating their craft and gathered data through a survey and interviews with practitioners working in the field, nationally and internationally.

Sonia says: “Putting an ageing woman’s body on film is a challenging thing to do, considered a negative thing by some, but there is a lack of this in the media, dance, or film so there is a need to make this more mainstream and acceptable. It has prompted many interesting conversations. Much of my practice as research goes on in the ballet studio where I experience ageing physically on a daily basis which gives me great insight into how many of the mature dancers in my research have adapted their practice to accommodate their ageing bodies in order to keep performing.”

For more details about here work, check out her web site.
And here are links to Sonia’s dance films:
Interprète/Inappropriate Behaviour
Utterly (in)appropriate
āj

Dr Sonia York-Pryce studied classical ballet at Elmhurst Ballet School, UK and the Royal Ballet School UK, and contemporary dance at the London School of Contemporary Dance and the Laban Centre, in London, UK. She has enjoyed artist residencies with Red Gate Gallery, Beijing China, photographing Beijing LDTX Contemporary Dance Company; and an interdisciplinary residency with Hospitalfield House, Arbroath Scotland. She has also photographed London Studio Centre’s Images Ballet Company.

In conversation 5: Dr Margaret E. Collins

The “In conversation” series aims to demonstrate the wealth, breadth and depth of what constitutes Practice As Research.

In this episode, Dr Nicole Brown talks to Dr Margaret Collins.

Margaret E. Collins is an award winning composer whose recent focus has been the integration of non-western instruments into ensembles with western orchestral instruments. Meg earned a PhD in Music composition form Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, for her dissertation “Melting the Boundaries: The integration of ethnic instruments into western art music.” She composed eight works featuring seven different ethnic instruments: the Chinese xiao, the Native American flute, the Persian tar, the Persian santoor, the Irish uilleann pipes, and Irish tin whistles. Her song for treble chorus, flute and piano, “maggie and milly and molly and may,” was awarded First Prize in the Berkshire Children’s Chorus Composition Competition.
For more information about her work and achievements, check out her web site.

Subscribe to the recordings:
Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

1.9. Participatory activist research: Reflexivity, transparency and accountability

Seminar on the 1st June 2022

Source: Jenny Pickerill

Participatory activist research: Reflexivity, transparency and accountability
After briefly outlining what participatory activist research is, this talk will explore what it means to become intimately involved in activist projects as an academic researcher. Jenny will reflect on the need for transparency, accountability and a pragmatism in navigating the multiple demands of a neoliberal academy, activist temporalities, and personal emotions and politics in her work in community environmentalism.

Jenny Pickerill is a Professor of Environmental Geography and Head of Department of Geography at Sheffield University, England. Her research focuses on inspiring grassroots solutions to environmental problems and in hopeful and positive ways in which we can change social practices. She has published 3 books (Cyberprotest; Anti-war Activism; Eco-Homes) and over 30 articles on themes around eco-housing, eco-communities, social justice and environmentalism. She is currently completing her book Eco-communities: Living Together Differently.

Subscribe to the recordings:
Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

Poetry As Research on SAGEMethodspace

Venn diagram outlining practice, teaching and research as three distinct areas and the section that overlaps in the middle is called Practice as Research

Source: NBrown

The founders of the Poetry As Research group Áine McAllister and Nicole Brown were invited to contribute to the SAGEMethodspace website. The SAGEMethodspace currently focuses on practitioner research and creative research practices. Áine and Nicole were asked to offer a brief introduction to Practice As Research and to Poetic Inquiry, as well as to highlight the community of poetic practitioners that we have established.

Here is our core argument:

There are now many terms in use to describe the research-practice nexus. […] In sum, practice as research is research that is carried out as part of practice or that is practice. […] Poetry writing has established itself as one such method of analysis and as a viable research output in itself, although it is still struggling free from the margins.

Click here to see the full blog post on SAGEMethodspace.

Poetry As Research readings

Pile of printed journal articles for reading

Source: NBrown

The Poetry As Research group is a reading and discussion group offering an opportunity to learn about, review and critique poetic pieces emerging from autoethnographic or ethnographic research, poetic inquiry and other Poetry As Research work.

Here is a list of readings that have been discussed and that may be helpful for anyone interested in Poetry As Research:

Maynard, K., & Cahnmann‐Taylor, M. (2010). Anthropology at the edge of words: Where poetry and ethnography meet. Anthropology and Humanism, 35(1), 2-19.

Davis, C. (2021). Sampling poetry, pedagogy, and protest to build methodology: Critical poetic inquiry as culturally relevant method. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(1), 114-124.

Carroll, P., Dew, K., & Howden-Chapman, P. (2011). The heart of the matter: Using poetry as a method of ethnographic inquiry to represent and present experiences of the informally housed in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Qualitative Inquiry, 17(7), 623-630.

Görlich, A. (2016). Poetic inquiry: Understanding youth on the margins of education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(4), 520-535.

Click here for more information on Poetic Inquiry and Poetry As Research on the PAR website.