International Health Humanities Network Membership

I am currently an independent researcher and associate lecturer in the Department of Cultures, Film and Media at the University of Nottingham. My research is interdisciplinary, lying primarily on the intersection of literary theory and cultural studies. In my recently completed doctoral thesis on collaboration, community and exchange in the later work of the contemporary author Iain Sinclair, I used a number of critical methodologies to present a culturally contextualised study of this author’s collaborative artistic practice, explored in relation to the discourses of political communitarianism in post-1997 UK politics. This research was guided by a broader critical questioning of the oppositional, subversive, and above all ethical role that collaborative creative activity might play as an intervention in more hegemonic political imaginings of ‘community’.

Recently, I have expanded this research context to work on more ‘applied’ projects relating to ideas of creative practice and community: researching particularly in the fields of medical humanities and arts and health, and working with community groups and cultural institutions across Nottinghamshire. I have a particular interest here in participatory arts and mental health, and have worked closely as a researcher with the Arts on Prescription services coordinated by Nottingham City Arts and the Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham.