Author Archives: Nicole Brown

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.

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!

1.8. Drawing research: Using drawing as a participatory research paradigm

Source: Monica Sassatelli

Seminar on the 4th May 2022:

Drawing research: Using drawing as a participatory research paradigm
Drawing has had a place in social research for a long time, especially in anthropology as field note taking, but also more specifically and recently in arts-based research and visual studies. Social research on drawings is a well-established method in a variety of related areas from psycho-social research with children to market research. Research with drawings however, where both the artefact and the practice of drawing are a constitutive part of the production of knowledge being sought, often in collaboration with research participants, is rarer. In this talk Dr Monica Sassatelli looks into the latter, with particular focus on the affordances of narrative drawing.

There is some drawing involved in this presentation: please have some paper and a pencil or pen ready.
Here are some drawings from participants:

Self-portrait with noodle-arms.

Source: RJ

Self-portrait in two colours

Source: SBass

Self-portrait with lots of curly hair.

Source: NB

 

 

 

 

 

Download Dr Sassatelli’s slides.

Dr Monica Sassatelli is Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, Italy. She is a cultural sociologist with research expertise on on cultural events and institutions, cultural policies and creative industries. Among her publications are the monograph Becoming Europeans. Cultural Identity and Cultural Policies and the edited collection Arts Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere. Recent articles include: “‘Europe in your Pocket’: narratives of identity in euro iconography” (Journal of Contemporary European Studies) and “Symbolic Production in the Art Biennial: Making Worlds” (Theory, Culture and Society).

 

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!

 

Play in the Pandemic

Source: Play in the Pandemic

PAR network members Prof John Potter and Dr Michelle Cannon share from their play in the pandemic research. The exhibition of work from the Play Observatory project, produced online with the Young V&A (formerly the Museum of Childhood) and designed by Episod Studios is now open: http://playinthepandemic.play-observatory.com

It is best viewed on a laptop or desktop and not on a mobile device.

Launched in March 2022, Play in the Pandemic is an online exhibition drawing on the work of the Play Observatory. The exhibition showcases children’s artworks, games and films from across the UK that were contributed as part of the Play Observatory project. It celebrates how children have demonstrated resilience, resourcefulness, and creativity through play, supporting and reflecting their wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-22.

The Play Observatory was funded from October 2020 to March 2022 by the Economic and Social Research Council under the UK Research and Innovation `COVID-19 Rapid Response` fund. The work was undertaken by researchers from IOE, UCL’s Faculty For Education and Society, Prof John Potter, Dr Kate Cowan and Dr Michelle Cannon, The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, Dr Valerio Signorelli, and, the School of Education at the University of Sheffield, Dr Yinka Olusoga, Dr Julia Bishop and Dr Cath Bannister.

For more information, visit the Play Observatory 

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!

1.7. Queer Psycho: arts-based research and immersive visual storytelling

Source: E Dare

Queer Psycho: arts-based research and immersive visual storytelling.

After Neumark, Dr Eleanor Dare considers the software and processes through which Immersive Visual Storytelling (IVS) develops and unfolds as a medium and material in which we perceive, rather than ‘an object that we perceive’ (Neumark, 2017, p. 28). The critical and creative strategies Eleanor will discuss in this talk have the intention of surfacing the assumptions, affordances and dissaffordances of the technological and social terrain of IVS, to avert a critical vacuum in which immersion becomes a spell, arguably making us too beguiled to exert political and social agency. Dr Dare will preview scenes from an evolving project, Queer Psycho, part of several long term works which re-envision and re-evaluate aspects of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, often deploying artificially intelligent agents and automated cinematography as a critical practice.

Dr Eleanor Dare joined UCL in April 2022 as Lecturer in Practice Based Research and Media. Eleanor currently works at the Faculty of Education, Cambridge and was formerly Reader in Digital Media at the RCA and Head of Programme for MA Digital Direction. Some of Eleanor’s work, short stories and academic publications can be found here: https://rejectedshortstories.uk/2021/10/20/academic-publications/

 

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!

In conversation 4: Cymbeline Buhler

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 Cymbeline Buhler.

Two adult person wearing coats, twirling.

Source: CBuhler

Cymbeline Buhler has been a theatre artist for over twenty years. She has held Artistic Director positions at Western Edge Youth Arts in Melbourne and Backbone Youth Arts companies in Brisbane. She has developed over twenty original theatre productions that have shown in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Cymbeline is currently undertaking doctoral research investigating her arts practice within ‘Theatre of Friendship, Sri Lanka’, an ongoing peace-building arts network she founded in 2012. Her work has been located in spaces such youth engagement, disability arts, cross-cultural theatre and cross-generational communication.

Download more images from Cymbeline’s past projects here.

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!

In conversation 3: Prof Haidy Geismar

Cover of Prof Geismar's book "Impermanence"

Source: UCL Press

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 Prof Haidy Geismar.

Prof Haidy Geismar is a social anthropologist with research interests in intellectual and cultural property, indigenous rights and colonial histories and legacies, new forms of cultural representation, the affects and effect of digitisation, the anthropology of art, critical museology and the South Pacific (especially Vanuatu and New Zealand).Current research projects include Finding Photography – a collaboration with collections care researchers to explore the social networks and materials underpinning contemporary digital art photography, and Collecting in Context – a project exploring the applicability of new digital collecting platforms in diverse cultural settings. Prof Geismar is committed to museum practice, with long-term affiliations to a number of different museums, including the Tate and Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and she has curated a number of exhibitions, including Port Vila Mi Lavem Yu (Port Vila, I love you) in Honolulu, Hawaii, in May 2011, and part of which then travelled to the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Prof Geismar’s work is available on the website https://www.haidygeismar.com/index.html and her two books Impermanence: Exploring continuous change across cultures and Museum object lessons for the digital age are free to download from the UCL Press website. 

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!

1.6. Explorations in film-making as a form of practice-based research

Image showing two children holding hands and one person with an iPad filming. One further person looks on.

Source: TBryer

Seminar cancelled due to strike action in UK Higher Education Institutions.

In this session Dr Theo Bryer and Prof Andrew Burn will share some of the films they have made as aspects of the research projects that they have engaged in. They will reflect on the questions raised by this approach related to possibilities and limitations associated with: representation and ethical concerns; editing as a form of analysis; viewing or sharing as a means of opening up dialogue about research findings; the academic status of these artefacts and skills, technology and support.

Dr Theo Bryer is currently joint Programme Leader for the MA in English Education and tutor on the English with Drama PGCE at UCL IOE. Theo joined the IOE part-time to teach on the English with Drama PGCE, around ten years ago, while still teaching in school and having taught Drama (mostly) for over twenty years in schools and colleges in Birmingham and London. Theo was also involved in Theatre in Education, youth theatre and projects involving young people who were newly arrived in South London schools. Theo has received Arts Council funding for some of these projects and experimented with media production alongside improvisational drama. These activities informed on-going research interests.

Dr Andrew Burn is Professor of English, Media and Drama, and director of the DARE centre (Digital | Arts | Research | Education), a research collaboration with the British Film Institute. Visit the DARE website  – www.darecollaborative.net – for information about events and projects, and links to people and partners. He is also director of MAGiCAL projects, an enterprise developing game-based software for education, in particular the game-authoring tool Missionmaker which features in several of his research projects. Andrew has published work on many aspects of the media, including media literacy in schools, the semiotics of the moving image and computer games, and young people’s production of digital animation, film and computer games. He has conducted a wide range of research project over many years, funded by, among others, the AHRC, the European Commission, the ESRC and the EPSRC. Visit his personal website for more information about projects, publications and interests: www.andrewburn.org. He is interested in the study of popular culture, especially as it relates to play, the arts and education. Methodologically, he has adapted theories of multimodality to describe and analyse media texts, relating them to them to to the Cultural Studies research tradition. He has previously taught English, Drama and Media Studies in comprehensive schools for over twenty years. He has been a Head of English and an Assistant Principal at his last school, Parkside Community College in Cambridge, where his main role was to direct the school’s media arts specialism: it was the first specialist Media Arts College in the country.

 

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!

ResDance podcast: Embodied Inquiry

Image of logo of ResDance podcastThe ResDance podcast led by Dr Gemma Harman is dedicated to research methodologies and methods in dance practice. It is intended for educators, students, practitioners and performers and interdisciplinary researchers curious to learn more about dance research in action.

Episode 10 of the podcast relates to Embodied Inquiry. Dr Nicole Brown and Dr Jennifer Leigh offer insight into their shared understandings of embodiment and embodied practice. Through discussion of their research interests and the variety of methods and approaches employed in their own research, they explore what an embodied approach can bring to a research project. Reflections of considerations that need to be acknowledged in research, namely reflective practice, self-acceptance and positionality are also explored. The ideas presented are drawn from principles of embodied inquiry from their recent publication: Embodied Inquiry Research Methods.

 

Dr Nicole Brown is Associate Professor at UCL Institute of Education and Director of Social Research & Practice and Education Ltd. Nicole’s research interests relate to physical and material representations of experiences, the generation of knowledge and use of metaphors to express what is difficult to express, and more generally, research methods and approaches to explore identity and body work. Her books include Lived Experiences of Ableism in Academia: Strategies for Inclusion in Higher Education, Ableism in Academia: Theorising Experiences of Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses in Higher Education, Embodied Inquiry: Research Methods, and Making the Most of Your Research Journal.
She tweets as @ncjbrown and @AbleismAcademia.

Dr Jennifer Leigh initially trained as a chemist and somatic movement therapist before completing her doctorate in education at the University of Birmingham (2012). She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education and Academic Practice at the University of Kent (UK) where she co-chairs the Disabled Staff Network. She is Vice Chair (Research) of the International Women in Supramolecular Chemistry (WISC) network and has led on a paper setting out the ethos of calling in the community to enact change, and a forthcoming book. She has edited two books: Ableism in Academia with Nicole Brown, and Conversations on Embodiment. This year she co-authored Embodied Inquiry with Nicole Brown. Her research interests include marginalisation in academia, academic practice, academic development, and ableism as well as phenomenological and creative research methods in higher education and other applications.
Twitter: @drschniff @SupraChem @SupraLab1

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!

In conversation 2: Dr Sara Young

Image of the logo for the Practice As Research PAR networkThe “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 Sara Young.

 

Dr Sara Young is a lecturer at UCL Institute of Education. Sara’s research focuses on the relationship between language and identity, especially in the context of contemporary Britain, pre- and post-Brexit. Her current projects investigate bi/multilingual practices and identity construction amongst adolescents, and how these various practices may be at play in different spaces. Sara is also involved in Polish migration work, and has recently completed a Covid-19 related project which explored the impact of the lockdown on Polish Saturday schools in the UK, and the subsequent impact on heritage language learning. Sara specialises in narrative inquiry, exploring how narrative can be a means to construct identity, both for the individual and for nation states, and is also involved with the ethical nature of research, including the questions that arise when working with adolescents and young people; and the ethics of data translation and transcription in multilingual research.

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!

In conversation 1: Dr Jasmine Shadrack

Image of book cover of Black Metal, Trauma, Subjectivity and Sound: Screaming the Abyss by Dr Jasmine Shadrack. Black book with picture of antlers and red lettering

Source: Emerald

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 Jasmine Shadrack.

Dr Jasmine Shadrack is a composer, musician, and scholar. She has been an extreme metal guitarist for the last twenty years and a black metal vocalist for the last five. Her research areas include trauma studies, disability studies, feminism, performance, extreme metal, autoethnography and psychoanalysis. She sits on the editorial board for the Metal Music Studies journal and is currently working on two co-edited collections, Music and Death vol. 2 (through Progressive Connexions and Emerald) and Metal and Dis/Ability with Professor Amber Clifford of the University of Missouri, USA, also through Emerald. She is currently composing a Requiem Mass and working on a dark folk collaboration with Francesca Stevens, entitled Dōlǒur. Her website is available at http://www.nacht-hexe.com. Jasmine’s book “Black Metal, Trauma, Subjectivity and Sound: Screaming the Abyss” is available from Emerald.

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!