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Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
Schedule
13.00-13.30
13.30-15.00
Registration & Coffee (Checkland D222)
Panel Presentations
Panel 1 (Checkland D222)
Chair: Denise Turner (Sussex)
Dr. Jill Daniels | Tony Gammidge | Anna Savage | Dr. Mike Diboll
Panel 2 (Bevendean BE301)
Chair: Nicola Streeten (Sussex)
Dr. Alev Adil | Shannon Magness | Richard Berry | Russell Heywood
Panel 3 (Bevendean BE302)
Chair: Jess Moriarty (Brighton)
Dr. Patti Gaal-Holmes | Dr. Anna Cole | Sarah Jones | Marina Tsartsara
Panel 4 (Dallington 109)
Chair: Mike Hayler (Brighton)
Dr. George Musgrave | Ross Wignall | Samantha Robertson | Michael Chronopoulos
15.00-15.15
15.15-16.00
Break
Presentations
Denise Turner (Sussex), “Staring my self in the 'I' : When personal stories make public
impact” (Checkland D222)
This session will focus on the ways in which we story ourselves and others, whilst simultaneously being
storied. Beginning with an experience of being 'front page' news in a national newspaper, Denise will
explore what can be learned from different forms of storying and draw parallels with research.
Participants will also be invited to collaborate in some storying work.
Nicola Streeten (Sussex), “Stories in comics form” (Checkland E513)
Nicola will show how the comics form can offer a platform for the presentation of serious subject
matter. She will illustrate her talk with examples from her own award winning graphic memoir Billy, Me
& You. This will be contextualised by introducing Graphic Medicine and Graphic Cultures, which
recognise the transformative potential of telling stories with comics.
Mike Hayler & Jess Moriarty (both Brighton), “Engaging Stories from Teaching”
(Checkland B406)
We will use examples of our own autoethnographic writing to trigger discussions on how personal
stories can inform and enhance teaching and learning activities and how the sharing of personal stories
can develop understanding, enhance inclusivity and engender transformative meaning making amongst
staff and students.
16.00-16.45
16.45-17.00
Discussion – questions to take forward (Checkland D222)
Closing Remarks (Checkland D222)
Organised by Jess Moriarty (Brighton) and Denise Turner (Sussex)
C21: Centre for Research in Twenty-First Century Writings
Arts & Humanities, University of Brighton
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
Abstracts
Panel 1 (Checkland D222)
Chair: Denise Turner (Sussex)
My Private Life: Autoethnography in the Experimental Autobiographical
Documentary Film
Dr. Jill Daniels (East London)
My Private Life (2014) is a 63-minute autoethnographic documentary film which focuses on longheld secrets in my Jewish family. Michael Renov defines the types of films that deal centrally with
the filmmaker’s difficult personal life as examples of domestic ethnography where the filmmaker
documents daily lives within a domestic setting such as a family, sometimes contextualised within a
wider social community. My Private Life consists of multiple layers of voices which mediate my self
cinematically, offers narrative complexity and enables me in my role as filmmaker and daughter to
explore my elderly parents’ contested identities. Levels of performance in the creation of my distinct
selves correspond to my role as filmmaker; interlocutor; subject; and fictionalised performing author.
As filmmaker I document my parents’ daily lives in a small flat in north London. In my performed role
as the daughter/child, my voice ─ over photographs of my parents and their friends, and static
shots of multiple houses and flats where they lived over the years ─ I interrupt their voice-overs to
dispute the authenticity of their memories. The final level ─ which begins in the latter part of the film
─ my corporeal performance of direct address to camera disrupts the narrative structure and shifts
my ‘character’ into a more central role. The inclusion of my embodied self may serve to remind
spectators that my ‘real’ authorial self may convey a fabricated point of view, a mask that both
disguises and reveals (Sayad, 2013). My created multiple selves do not serve to provide an authentic
mediation of familial relationships but uncertainty; a dispersion of meaning that may allow the
spectator to speculate on what has been seen and heard. The multiplicity of ‘voices’ thus allows the
film to offer itself to differing spectatorial interpretations of my contested identity.
“I Haven't Got the Greatest Story Alive but I've got a Story to Tell” (Ben)
Tony Gammidge (Brighton)
In my presentation I will talk about animation projects I run on secure and psychiatric units and in
prisons in which participants tell their stories using video and animation. Their stories might be a
mixture of fact, fiction and fantasy and often provide an alternative life story to those contained
within their case notes of which they have no control. There is the story of Chester who was a boy
soldier in Somalia, the story of Irene who was abused for 10 years by her father but then who
plucked up the courage to go to the police to report him, there is Ben who tells his story of a
romantic liaison with someone in his hostel where he is living, there is Terry who recounts his story
from his journey from being taken into care to ending up in prison and there is Neil whose day to day
story of his time in his prison cell highlights his love for the many budgies that he shares his space
with.
There is also my mother's story I made into a film inspired by my work in secure settings about the
death of my brother. Many of these stories address difficult and challenging issues such as abuse,
trauma, mental illness, incarceration, suicide and loss but all of them also show a spirit of survival,
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
humour and self reflection. All of these stories are important and help make connections and
challenge stigma and lead to a greater understanding of the issues that emerge. I will argue the
importance of autoethnography for the people who I work with, people who very often have very
little say in what their story is and how it is presented. As well as talk I will screen a number of short
clips from the films and stories mentioned above.
Handle with Care: Exploring Identity and Finding a Voice as the Parent Carer of
a Disabled Child
Anna Savage (Brighton)
My research project “From Love’s Stable Bow” started with the question “How can we use the
process of animation and storytelling to support a sense of belonging within a community with a
group of parents who have children with learning disabilities?” From this project, I have a series of
short films made by participants including my own film The Boy Who was Different. As a single
parent and full time carer for my disabled teenage son, Autoethnography has been a key factor
within my research. A further theme which has developed within the work is how the use of
storytelling, specifically that which involves the personal, often “unspoken” aspects can, by its very
nature, act as a support mechanism for how we establish our identities, both as a group and as
individuals.
Working on my own creative response which will form the final exhibition for my MA, I have started
writing a series of “dialogues” or one way conversations from my own perspective, directed at a
variety of people as the result of an even more varied series of circumstances. I have not yet
decided how they will be used but am starting to experiment with combining audio, sculpture and
animation as a way of bringing my stories together.
To the children who stare:
I smile at you to see what you will do.
He is not like you, she is. What’s all that about?
Do I love either of them any less than your mother loves you?
Are you staring because you are curious?
Do the noises we make, make you jump?
Is it catching? The thing that makes him different?
Is it catching? The thing that makes you stare?
When I smile, will you hide? Deep in the fabric of your mother’s coat.
Searching for security while she continues to converse, oblivious.
Will you be embarrassed? After the split second you show surprise on your face.
(She is staring back!)
Will you smile?
I wave and say “hello”, hoping that you’ll wave back.
Higher Education, Revolution, and Narrative Mental Health: a PersonalPolitical Journey from Bahrain to Neoliberalised UK HE PLC
Dr. Mike Diboll (Brighton)
This presentation provides an outline of the autoethnographic dimensions of my current research
and writing at the University of Brighton. My work concerns four inter-relating themes:
Organised by Jess Moriarty (Brighton) and Denise Turner (Sussex)
C21: Centre for Research in Twenty-First Century Writings
Arts & Humanities, University of Brighton
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
•
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The ethnography of social and political change in the post-2011 Arabian Gulf region,
focusing on the mental health and related struggles of revolutionary students who are torture
survivors
My autoethnographic life narrative around my witnessing revolution and counter-revolution
in the region in 2011, and my witnessing vicious human rights abuses meted out by the
state to students I had taught there as the university sector was taken over by the coercive
arms of the state
The therapeutic storying of my subsequent struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,
Major Depressive Disorder, unemployment and underemployment as a torture survivor trying
to re-enter a neoliberalised UK HE after a decade working in the Middle East
An autoethnographic meditation on the implications for higher education
internationalisation, with a focus on working with students and faculty who have undergone
physical and psychological trauma as political instability increases in key ‘overseas HE
markets, and the need for internationalisation to go beyond ‘edubusiness’
My experience has been that autoethnographic, life narrative writing, and ‘storying’ provide a
framework, perhaps the only framework, that can facilitate a multidisciplinary scholarly reflection on
complex and inter-related social phenomena which are still messily ongoing, and in which the
writer/investigator has been an active participant. This is particularly the case in situations such as
my own, where the investigator’s subjectivity has undergone radical and traumatic disruptions that in
turn partake in the objective interplay of social and political change forces. In this presentation I shall
outline my work and its contexts, before discussing some of the relational-ethical and
methodological issues I have encountered in my work, including ways in which ‘storying’ can help
capture narrative ‘data’ that might elude more conventional qualitative social science methods. I
shall conclude with a brief reading of a short work in progress.
Panel 2 (Bevendean BE301)
Chair: Nicola Streeten (Sussex)
Autoethnography: writing the self and engaging with contested memory in
Cyprus
Dr. Alev Adil (Greenwich)
My creative research deploys an autoethnographic methodology, an approach that seeks to
deconstruct as much as to express or represent the self of memory and the process of remembering
itself. Contested collective memory practices of Cypriot history and of the Nicosia border zone in
particular are the focus and locus for the work. My childhood memories of growing up in the Turkish
Cypriot enclave and departure from the island in 1974 are delineated through creative practice,
poetry and performance.
In this paper I will present images, and filmed extracts of my situated writing practice, both in the
context of my own performance Memory in the Dead Zone performed in various iterations in both
the Greek and Turkish speaking halves of Nicosia at Side Streets Cultural Centre and ARTos Centre,
in London at Tate Britain as part of Late at the Tate and in the Queen’s House, Maritime Museum
and video extracts from Writing Nicosia, a collaborative writing project I was involved in and
explore their relationship with my academic writing in relation to it.
Representing the contradiction and indeterminacy inherent in an investigation of collective memories
of which you are a part involves writing in several registers simultaneously, so the distanced bird’s
eye point of view and impersonalised conventions of academic writing is not adequate to represent
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
the personal and collective ambiguities, ambivalences and contradictions of memory. In order to
reflect the haptic uncertainty and contingency of the act of remembering and the moment
remembered as well as the organising narratives of official and unofficial collective memory, my
academic practice deploys writing in autobiographic and mythic poetic registers, which intrudes to
disrupt and interrogate the unity and chronology that emerges out of narrativisation, whether in
philosophy, literature or popular culture.
Sounds of Womb, Home Heaven: Yet Another AutoEthnographic Process
Dr. Shannon Magness (Brighton)
This paper draws on my new film-research-project ‘Womb, Home, Heaven’. This film will address a
widespread issue using my personal experiences (and will at some point incorporate interviews with
others): Born into a violent household with a frightened mother, and witnessing domestic violence
throughout my childhood, I suffered depression as an adult. Now I am reading research about
biological effects of such a situation: A 2011 article from Current Biology reports that babies in the
womb form adaptive responses to their mother’s fear, and are likely to become hyper vigilant,
interpersonally challenged and anxious/depressed and remain so throughout adulthood (CB 2011;
21 (23). Other studies have shown that witnessing domestic violence in childhood correlates with
being victimised later in life by an intimate partner (REF); and I also married an abusive partner.
I began my research by reflecting on my experiences while reading the ‘womb science’ and what
emerged first were sound impressions and melodies (from songs, old TV shows, adverts etc.) So I
obtained a keyboard and began experimenting with bringing these memories, sounds, melodies
together through soundscapes or ‘songs’.
Now I am making observations about the music I produced, and gaining insight that is somehow
‘ethnographic’ . In the Organised Sound article ‘Soundscape composition: the convergence of
ethnography and acousmatic music’, John Drever turns to ethnography as a way of looking at
soundscape composition as representation rather than just ‘music’ (2002; 7 (1)). My presentation
would include an excerpt from one of the soundscape representations I’ve made for my project, as a
case of performative ethnography.
Exploring Contemporary Advertising Practice Through Auto-ethnography
Thomas Richard Berry (Independent)
Advertising practice is evolving in response to the changing wider environmental context, in
particular the impact of social, digital media and the blurring of ‘church and state’ in native
advertising and content marketing which encroach on the traditional boundaries between
advertising, public relations and journalism. As a result, the range of digital and creative skills which
underpin success in the industry are often referred to as ‘fused’ skills and organisations operating
within ‘creative clusters’. The research centres on contemporary advertising practice and advertising
education (two inter-related but very distinct fields) through the lens of Bourdieu’s related concepts
of capital, dispositions, habitus, field and practice.
The over-arching research methodology is ethnographic (with a substantial auto-ethnographic
component) and the range of methods is mixed reflecting the indirect approaches to
operationalising Bourdieu’s concepts. In order to generate data across an appropriate timeframe, an
auto-ethnographic approach is used incorporating a month-long blog-diary. Life history narratives
Organised by Jess Moriarty (Brighton) and Denise Turner (Sussex)
C21: Centre for Research in Twenty-First Century Writings
Arts & Humanities, University of Brighton
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
are developed through semi-structured interviews at the start (visual data are constructed through
photography for subsequent photo-elicitation) and end of the process.
The participants are asked to make daily entries in a private WordPress-based blog-diary for onemonth. The entries can include text, images and hyperlinks. The dialogue between the participant
and principal investigator is maintained though commentary on the blogs.
The analysis of the interviews and blog-diary content will take the form of a narration. Firstly
developed from the themes initially proposed, but equally through the temporal stories developed by
the participant (referring to their own life history and practice) and through the second interview and
photo-elicitation with the aim of constructing more coherent narratives. By combining data across a
range of participants a more communal narrative may be constructed.
Autoethno-satire
Russell Heywood (Brighton)
I am presenting this as part of my arts practice based Phd research. After reading from my Novel:
The Doom of Clowns, there will be a discussion about the research process and why I’m defining
the novel as Autoethno-Satire.
Setting and voice:
The novel is set partly in Glastonbury’s alternative community, where I lived for two and a half years.
Voices emerging from reflections on Glastonbury and as a Phd researcher, are satirically hybridized
using a dialogic (Bakhtin 1981) approach. This intentionally subversive and double-voiced, (Bakhtin
1981) writing process aspires to suggest: ‘other ways of knowing and being.’ (Pg. 7 Contemporary
British Autoethnography 2013)
My perspective on other ways of knowing and being has developed over twenty years of
engagement in meditation practise, alternative spirituality and groups resisting a neoliberal ideology.
These involvements have often been in dialogue with my earlier environments and secular
education, at a time when such alternative approaches, were more frequently viewed as faintly
ridiculous or extreme.
Carnivalesque (Bakhtin 1984) and vernacular (M. Bowman 2012) ‘lived’ dialogue, often contests
cultural space and its spiritual, political, or mythic meanings within the Glastonbury community. The
often performative, carnivalesque approach used for the novel and in its presentation as research,
aims to remain consistent with this aspect of: ‘Alternative Glastonbury.’
Autoethno-Satire
The use of satire and fiction in autoethnographic writing, is suggested by A. Grant, N.P. Short and L.
Turner:
………textual practises which expose oppressive, deadening and creativity stifling societal practises
and experiences are key in challenging cultural hegemony. …….one such device, arguably useful for
critical autoethnographic work, is satire.…….Satire involves the strategic use of humour to
exaggerate and lampoon the paradoxes, contradictions and flaws inscribed within established
cultural practises in order to expose their absurdities and oppressive social consequences.
(Contemporary British Autoethnography Pg. 5-6: Sense Publishers 2013)
The reading from: The Doom of Clowns, introduces a space alien narrator, outlining his Phd
methodology. Themes of alienation and absurdity in the research process are explored.
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
Panel 3 (Bevendean BE302)
Chair: Jess Moriarty (Brighton)
Excavations for Opening up Histories: Liliesleaf Farm Mayibuye
Dr. Patti Gaal-Holmes (Independent)
The project Liliesleaf Farm: Mayibuye focuses on the personal and political histories intersecting at
Liliesleaf Farm (Rivonia, South Africa). The site has particular historical significance as it was the
headquarters of the military wing of the African National Congress (1961-63). A police raid on the
farm (1963) and the notorious Rivonia Trial (1964) resulted in the lifetime imprisonment of antiapartheid activists like Nelson Mandela. Ideas for the project originated with the discovery of 8mm
film footage and photographs of my immigrant family at Liliesleaf Farm as this was our family home
in the late 1960s. The idea of the house as a palimpsest, holding multiple layers of history is
reflected upon and the challenges of combining personal and political histories lie at the forefront of
this autoethnographic project. In this paper I will be asking how artists/writers, using personal or
public archives, can open up new critical engagements with histories. In John Berger’s estimation
‘[t]he artist sets out to improve the world – not in the way a reformer or a revolutionary does – but in
his own way, by extending what he believes to be the truth, and by expressing the range and depth
of human hopes’. (Berger 1979: 32). Perhaps this truth then – invigorating the spaces of history to
open up new positions and modes of entry – also has the liberty to move between fact, fiction and
confabulation. A consideration of the possibilities opened up by creative engagements with
traumatic histories is contextualized with reference to texts by Mark Sanders, TJ Demos, Hilde van
Gelder and Nikos Papastergiadis; and the writings of W.G.Sebald. A discussion of artist/filmmakers
working with archival films to open up new engagements with histories includes British/Ghanian
filmmaker, John Akomfrah, Hungarian avant-garde filmmaker Péter Forgács and South African artist
Penny Siopis.
Ngapartji, Ngapartji. In turn, in turn
Dr. Anna Cole (Brighton)
The local papers called it ‘the beast from the east’ – a cold wind from Siberia that blew quietly but
persistently through London and turned it into an enormous walk-in freezer. On such a night in early
February, at the invitation of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kings College, London, a
band of hardy souls met to celebrate the British launch of a new co-edited collection Ngapartji,
Ngapartji: In Turn, In Turn. Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia (ANU Press, 2014). The
collection was the result of an on-going collaboration between myself, Vanessa Castejon (Centre de
Recherches Interculturelles, Universite Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cite), Oliver Haag (Austrian Centre
for Transcultural Studies, Vienna) and Karen Hughes (Centre for Indigenous Studies, RMIT, Australia)
and explores the possibilities of self-reflexive scholarly writing in post-colonial contexts. ‘Ngapartji,
Ngapartji’, a foundational concept for Anangu-speaking people from Central Australia means
‘reciprocal exchange’ and in this spirit we invited established and emerging scholars of Australian
Indigenous literature, anthropology, cultural studies and history to tell us something of the
relationship between their personal story and their research. We saw ego-histoire, a term coined by
Pierre Nora in his Essais d’Ego-Histoire (1987), as a methodology, and an opportunity to experiment
with the idea that life-stories when placed side by side, could be seen as a sort of ‘serial data’.
Could individual life-stories, cultural understandings, misunderstandings and imaginings create
something more than the sum of their parts? Our thinking was influenced by the possibilities
presented, over the past three decades or so, by life-writing in a range of academic disciplines
Organised by Jess Moriarty (Brighton) and Denise Turner (Sussex)
C21: Centre for Research in Twenty-First Century Writings
Arts & Humanities, University of Brighton
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
including, but not limited to, literature, anthropology, cultural studies, queer theory, social history and
the genre of auto-ethnography. Chapters in Ngapartji, Ngapartji range across dialogic experimental
writing, more conventional memoir, deconstructionist theoretical reflections to family and local folklore. Reflecting on this work I consider what can be learnt about the potential for creative, evocative
post-colonial life-writing?
Autoethnography to Understand the Journalist Self
Sarah Jones (Independent)
Journalism is too important to not fully understand the practice (Zelizer 2009). Academic studies
have focussed on content analysis to measure news values and ethnography to understand
decision-making and hierarchy in the newsroom. Our knowledge of the journalist and the way they
work is limited as they are considered to rely on the undefined ‘gut instinct’ for their news sense
(Tuchman 1972, Schultz 2007). Participant observation and interviews have helped to bridge some
gaps but there is still a significant gap in our knowledge that explores the journalist self.
This paper focuses on my doctoral research, which explores the notion of reporter involvement in
television news. It is based on my own career as a professional journalist and my work as an
involved reporter. Autoethnography is used to present a retrospective understanding of the workings
of the journalist, the thoughts, behaviours and actions. To add a further dimension of critical
understanding (Anderson 2006), content analysis is applied to identify this newly defined area of
television reporting.
This is a unique methodological approach in journalism and media studies. Despite likening the
practice of Autoethnography to New Journalism (Ellis 2005), it is a new approach in the field.
However, the application of this methodology can have far reaching consequences for further
studies in examining the journalist self.
My In-complete Body: An Autoethnographic Performance Investigation Into
CPT2 Metabolic Myopathy
Marina Tsartsara (Roehampton)
This proposed interdisciplinary research is located at the intersections of art and science. Working
from a performance autoethnographic framework (Spry 2011), the project aims to examine methods
for exploring and problematising embodiment and re-presentation of disease through choreography
and moving image technologies.
The project arises from my professional experience as a movement based artist living with a fatty
acid oxidation disorder called CPT2 metabolic myopathy. CPT2 is an enzyme in the inner membrane
of the mitochondria responsible for permitting fatty acids to enter the nucleus of the mitochondria
and convert into energy. 20 people in the UK are diagnosed with this condition. Treatment for CPT2
is at experimental level.
To date, this genetic condition has only been researched through medical/scientific perspectives
and little, with no publications or wider cultural awareness of the lived experience of CPT2 metabolic
myopathy. However, in my own experience of CPT2 metabolic myopathy I have explored artistic
ways of working with these ‘deficient’ cells that apparently limit not only my physicality, but also my
identity. More than this, it is my ongoing intention to challenge what an ‘incomplete body’ is
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
traditionally considered to be.
Building on current performance autoethnography (Spry 2011) and feminist embodied practices that
investigate the relationship between bodies, health and medical/scientific contexts (Allegranti 2011;
2013; Frank 1995; Zeiler & Kall 2014), my aim is to investigate new possibilities of autoethnographic
performance through movement and the moving image technologies in relation to, inspired and
conditioned by, the cultural experience of ‘dis-ease’.
Panel 4 (Dallington 109)
Chair: Mike Hayler (Brighton)
Making Sense of My Creativity: Reflecting on Autoethnography
Dr. George Musgrave (Westminster)
This paper seeks to understand how the autoethnographic method might be employed in order to
try and make sense of how musicians experience their creative worlds. After an initial section which
seeks to philosophically evaluate the appropriateness of conducting qualitative research in a cultural
context within which one is already embedded, and, even more so, studying ones own experience
of that culture, the paper then reflects on my own experiences of the autoethnographic method. I
outline the nature of my four-year ESRC funded research project which traced my artistic career
from complete unknown, to a songwriter signed to Sony/EMI/ATV, and suggest how the method
allowed me to explore how I was experiencing the world of the unsigned music industry via the lens
of competitiveness. I suggest that autoethnography is not only wholly liberating given its ability to
synthesise the scientific presentation of sociological processes alongside the expressive, almost
literary, presentation of lived experience, but even more than this for musicians, can act as a way of
expressing ones artistic reality outside of the sphere of music itself and understanding your creative
decision making processes in an illuminating way. This paper therefore acts akin to an
autoethnography of autoethnography, contributing towards literature which not only critically
evaluates this newly emerging methodology, but which offers a perspective which might help other
researchers interested in the suitability and applicability of autoethnography to investigate their own
musical creativity and experiences.
Being the ‘Whole Man’: Enacting Moral Masculinity on a YMCA Sports
Leader’s Course in Brighton & Hove
Ross Wignall (Sussex)
Researchers of masculinity often silence the processes of ‘masculinisation’ embedded in their
research, leading to an unconscious gender-bias. In this paper, I present research based at the
Sussex branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Hove. As a specialist in
‘disadvantaged’ and excluded young men, the YMCA is designed to get its students back on track
and into mainstream education, employment and training. I focus on the Sports Leader’s course a
popular, national franchise that combines gaining sports coaching qualifications with a range of
leadership, communication and teambuilding activities. Through an auto-ethnographic exploration of
my own situated sense of masculinity as both worker and researcher, I suggest that these
programmes shepherd young men towards a form of institutional, though unstable, hegemonic
masculinity rooted in a holistic sense of mind, body and spirit, historically known as ‘The Whole
Man’. Using an ethnographic ‘moment of masculinity’ (Warren 2003), I show how my enactments of
‘Whole Man’ masculinity helped structure the narratives of young men, converting them from a
Organised by Jess Moriarty (Brighton) and Denise Turner (Sussex)
C21: Centre for Research in Twenty-First Century Writings
Arts & Humanities, University of Brighton
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
sense of failed masculinity towards feelings of success and moral self-realisation. Through my often
problematic relationships with young men on the course, I explore how these narratives are
constructed intersubjectively through my deliberate and often tense interactions, interviews and
reactions to their activities, language and stories. My negotiation of these encounters can help shed
light on how ‘masculinisation’ processes are conducted affectively, through specific feelings of
pride, honour and obligation that tie young men to their workers. However, I also note how these
processes are fragile, fraught and prone to failure, potentially feeding into toxic systems of
masculine supremacy which the YMCA is paradoxically attempting to erase.
‘From the Edge of the Abyss to the Foot of the Rainbow’ Narrating a Journey of Mental Health Recovery
Samantha Robertson (Southampton)
Background:
Mental illness is a tremendous burden and loss to the individual, the economy and to society, hence
the importance of mental health recovery. Developing a personal narrative is one way of making
sense of ‘the illness’ experience, and integrating this with the identity and experiences of the
individual ‘before the illness’.
My Research:
I am a PhD student at the University of Southampton, a mental health trainer, activist and a service
user. My research is an exploration of the process of developing a personal narrative and its
possible contribution to mental health recovery. Autoethnography was chosen as the basis for the
first phase of my research. I wrote a new version of my personal narrative as a set of 54 vignettes, I
have called this narrative ‘From the Edge of the Abyss to the Foot of the Rainbow’ - Narrating a
Journey of Mental Health Recovery. A Process Diary was also written to capture my process of
planning and writing the vignettes.
The data is emergent and will inform the next phases:
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Focus groups with other service users who have produced personal narratives.
Developing a series of workshops to support others to develop their own personal narratives
in order to support their mental health recovery.
My presentation will cover:
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Whether autoethnography is a suitable methodology for research in Health Sciences. There
was little experience and knowledge of autoethnography in the Health Sciences Faculty.
My process of writing the vignettes. I am well versed in ‘telling my story’ but writing the
vignettes was tough.
The emergent process. What I learnt from my process that will be used in developing the
personal narrative workshops?
‘Greece the Imagined Nation’: A Study of Selfhood and Subjectivity Through
Auto Ethnographic Visual Representations of ‘Ellinikotita’ (Greekness)
Michael Chronopoulos (Newport Film School, South Wales)
This study of Greek culture and film focuses on the auto-ethnographic film work of myself, Michael
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
Chronopoulos. I am seeking to situate the artistic content of this practice-based doctoral thesis in
both a historical and critical analysis, so as to demonstrate how my documentary film contributes to
the larger artistic and political discourse of modern Greece and to various notions of Greekness.
Themes of identity, the trauma and impact of exile and migration, reverse migration, language, and
the diaspora community are privileged in this study. Consequently, this study is situated within a
critical analysis, applying current theories of Film History, National Cinema Analysis, Gender Studies,
Queer Theory, Postcolonial Theory, and Theories of Subjectivity. As such, we will discover how the
analysis as well as the documentary film, contributes to new knowledge, while revealing the political
relevance about notions of Greekness, most often defined within a recurring protest milieu.
The thought process behind my film: In terms of the thought process behind the making of my new
documentary film entitled “I.M.”, there is not so much a process of thought as there was a process
of intuitive, artistic choices. That these choices come out of my own personal experience and
accumulated observations in life marks this film as an expression, of an individual whose identity of
Greekness or Ellinikotita is challenged on several fronts.
It is in the context of how my Greek identity has been challenged that seems to compel me to rely
more upon my intuitive choices and less upon my thought processes. So, what can we make of
these choices? Do we call them a survival instinct? Do we label them as a withdrawal into an
epistemology of solipsism, and if we do, are we qualified to condemn it for this posture, alone?
Indeed, it may well be all these things, and more. But I only know one thing as an artist: That in
order to make an impact in the field of Modern Greek Studies (that challenges the way in which we
are accustomed to doing things) I must be true to myself, and to myself, alone. That is all.
….............................................................
Biographical Notes
Dr. Alev Adil is Artist in Residence at the University of Greenwich where she is also Principal
Lecturer in visual culture and creative writing. She has been widely published in poetry anthologies,
academic and literary journals and has reviewed for The Times Literary Supplement, The
Independent and The Guardian. Her academic publications include research into the poetics of
memory, transnational literatures and literature in translation. She has performed her poetry at a
number of venues in London including the Queen's House at the Royal Maritime Museum, Tate
Britain and internationally in Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cyprus, France, Greece, Holland, Ireland,
Kosovo, Lithuania, Mexico, Romania and Turkey.
Anna Cole publishes in the area of feminist theory and post-colonialism. Her co-written film
documenting an aspect of Australian Aboriginal women’s urban life stories was shortlisted for a UN
Media Human Rights Award in 2010. She currently teaches with the Literature Team at the University
of Brighton.
Anna Savage is currently completing an MA in Inclusive Arts Practice at the University of Brighton.
She also runs an art department in a Special School in Eastbourne where she has developed her
own collaborative practice and working methods. She has facilitated projects, exhibiting work at the
Organised by Jess Moriarty (Brighton) and Denise Turner (Sussex)
C21: Centre for Research in Twenty-First Century Writings
Arts & Humanities, University of Brighton
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
Towner Gallery Annual Schools' Exhibition and has worked in partnership with the Franz Marc
Schüle in Dusseldorf. She is a single parent and full time disabled carer. Her research project "From
Love's Stable Bow", has involved making animation work with other parents and carers of disabled
children. She became interested in Autoethnography in relation to where she was placing herself
within the research. She is currently experimenting with ways of combining creative writing, film
making and sculpture as a way to tell my own story.
Dr. Denise Turner is a qualified Social Worker, she completed the MSW at Sussex University in
1989. She has worked within various statutory settings, including as Duty Social Worker within a
Children and Families Team and within Mental Health and Probation. Denise has also worked
widely within the voluntary sector, with homeless people, sex offenders and the elderly. Denise has
worked at the University since 2007 , as an Associate Tutor and later as a Teaching Fellow, being
appointed to a full time Lectureship in 2014. Denise is particularly interested in psychosocial
approaches to understanding the world and is a Member of the Association of Psychosocial
Studies, as well as a Founder Member of the U.S Centre for Narrative Practice. Within the Social
Work Dept at Sussex she is a founding member of the 'Many Minds' group developing psychosocial
approaches to teaching and research. Denise is developing reputation for work in the field of social
media and social work (see Research, publications) and is particularly interested in how the rapidly
developing landscape of social media is changing traditional notions of boundaries. She has
sustained an early interest in art and has used this within previous practice, most particularly in an
acute mental health setting. Denise is a Board Member of 'Social Work Education, the International
Journal' and a peer reviewer for The European Journal of Social Work, Ethics and Social Welfare and
Children and Society.
Dr. George Musgrave is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster in the Department of
Music. After his BA at the University of Cambridge he undertook a PhD as part of the ESRC Centre
for Competition Policy (UEA) on the emotional and behavioural ramifications of competitiveness in
creative markets. He is also a songwriter signed to Sony/EMI
Dr. Mike Diboll worked in the comparative Humanities at the Faculty of Human and Social
Sciences, United Arab Emirates University 2002-7, and at the College of Arts, University of Bahrain
2007-9. Leicester in 2001. From 2001 to 2007 he worked at the College of Humanities and Social
Sciences at the United Arab Emirates University in Abu Dhabi. From 2007-11 he was Associate
Professor of Comparative Literature at the College of Arts, University of Bahrain, and was a member
of the Academic Council involved in the start-up of Bahrain Teachers College, a major education
development initiative backed by the reformist wing of the Bahrain regime. He left Bahrain in
emergency circumstances in 2011 when the suppression of academic freedom and human rights
during the ‘National Safety’ period of martial law made ethical professional practice in higher
education impossible. He is currently undertaking a second doctorate at the College of Health
Sciences at the University of Brighton where his topic is education, revolution, and narrative mental
health. His main supervisor is Dr. Alec Grant. He has since written extensively on Bahrain
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/contributors/196745 and is a Visiting Research Associate at the
Centre for Research on Muslim Education at the UCL Institute of Education:
http://www.ioe.ac.uk/research/departments/cfhh/107953.html
Dr. Jess Moriarty researches in the field of pedagogy in writing practice, especially in autoethnographical academic writing and in creative writing with undergraduates.
She graduated from the University of Sussex with a Creative Writing MA in 2002 and joined the
University of Brighton soon after. Jess's doctorate looked at how to make academic writing more
personal and creative and included a play based on her autobiographical and researched
experiences with academic life. Her work looks at cross-disciplinary practice, community
engagement and linking creative process with the employability agenda. Jess is the Course Leader
for English Language and Literature and the co-founder of Work Write Live, which provides a range
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
of writing short courses and volunteering opportunities for students in the Faculty of Arts to develop
the vocational and academic skills they are acquiring on their degree program. She has been
interviewed by the Times Higher Educational Supplement about her workshops and won an
Innovation Award for her retreats where participants are encouraged to develop confidence with
writing and speaking.
Dr. Jill Daniels is an award winning filmmaker and Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of East
London. She has been making documentaries and fiction films since 1989 and has disseminated her
work widely through international film festivals, academic conferences and broadcast. Her practice
focuses on memory, place and subjectivities. Her most recent film, My Private Life (2014) (63 mins.)
is an autoethnographic exploration of contested identities in her Jewish family. She is co-editor and
contributor to Truth, Dare or Promise: Art and Documentary Revisited (2013), published by
Cambridge Scholars. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Media Practice. Her
website is www.jilldanielsfilms.com
Marina Tsartsara is a London based interdisciplinary dance artist, and a PhD candidate at the
department of Dance Psychology at the University of Roehampton, researching on
'Autoethnographic biomedical performance' partnered by the NHS. Her MSc was on Screendance
and her BA(Hons) on Performance and Visual Art. She is a certified Somatic Movement Performer
(ISMETA) and she is currently training as a Somatic Movement Educator (Body Mind Centering) and
Energy Psychologist. She is a founding member together with Maria R.Sideri (MSc) of
‘Transformation through Movement, Meditation and Creativity’ (TMMC) workshops.
Dr Mike Hayler works on the professional doctorate, postgraduate and undergraduate programmes
at the School of Education. His research draws upon analytic autoethnography and life history
methods to examine the education of teachers, the role of narrative in the construction of identity
and the development of pedagogy. These themes are closely related to his professional practice and
are informed by experience as a classroom teacher, advisory teacher and teacher educator.
Nicola Streeten is an anthropologist-turned-illustrator and comics scholar. Her graphic memoir,
Billy, Me & You, (2011, Myriad Editions) received a British Medical Association Award in 2012. Her
PhD research is the cultural history of British feminist comics 1970-2016.
Patti Gaal-Holmes was born in Johannesburg, South Africa to German and Hungarian immigrants.
She lived/travelled in various countries before settling in England and studying for a BA Hons in
Visual Art and an AHRB-funded MA Painting at Winchester School of Art. In 2006 she took up an
AHRC-funded research scholarship in film. Her doctoral research on 'A History of 1970s
Experimental Film: Britain’s Decade of Diversity' is the subject of a forthcoming publication with
Palgrave Macmillan (2015). Gaal‐Holmes has received Arts Council England grants for her cross‐
disciplinary practice and films have been screened at Tate Britain, ICA and King’s Place. She is
Reviews Editor for the Routledge journal, Transnational Cinemas and currently resides in Southsea,
England.
Richard Berry’s career has encompassed graphic design, media production, branding, marketing
and public relations across the public sector and professional services organisations. Notable
projects include implementing corporate identity programmes for a top ten law firm and a large
regional university, sponsorship activation from Ethiopia to Wembley via Leeds, and project
managing a large content web management installation. Personal highlights have been designing
the logo for Yorkshire Cricket’s one-day side, the Carnegie Challenge Cup and working with the best
rugby league team in the world. More recently he has moved into higher education, leading
programmes in advertising, public relations and marketing. His research centres on advertising
practice and particularly the move from university into the periphery of practice which he explores
through ethnography incorporating visual methods. He is also interested in the convergence of
Organised by Jess Moriarty (Brighton) and Denise Turner (Sussex)
C21: Centre for Research in Twenty-First Century Writings
Arts & Humanities, University of Brighton
Autoethnography:
Learning from Stories
13th May 2015 | Falmer Campus
University of Brighton
practices driven by digital technology and social media and the fusion of skills needed to succeed in
the persuasive communications industries.
Twitter: @TRBerry
Research: trberry.wordpress.com
Images: www.flickr.com/photos/thomasrichardberry/
Ross Wignall is based in the anthropology department at Sussex, his doctoral work stems from
several years working in the charity sector, most recently with disadvantaged young people in
Brighton at the YMCA and seeks to examine how the moral heart of transnational development work
is cultivated trans-locally, in local centres of engagement and intervention. He compares YMCA
operations in two local franchises, in Brighton and in The Gambia, West Africa to examine how
specific globalised, forms of Westernised morality are encoded through every-day, embodied
practice. Using a combination of auto-ethnography, participant observation and qualitative, in
-depth interviews to study a sports leadership, youth empowerment course in each location, he
focuses on processes of masculinity, morality and development in the trans-local setting, exploring
how young men, volunteers and managers constellate their life-worlds through complex
constellations of faith, aspiration and hope.
Russell Heywood is in the second year of his Mphil/Phd at Brighton. His research is in the form of
a satirical novel called: The Doom of Clowns. The research is based on his experiences of living in
alternative communities and as a researcher, at a South Coast University. The novel uses a
dialogical, carnivalesque approach developed through Mikhail Bakhtin's work. Themes of resistance
to neoliberal scientism and ideas of an enchanted worldview are explored, using absurd, clownish
and futuristic narratives that make use of the conventions of Speculative Fiction.
Shannon Magness earned a PhD in Creative and Critical Practice from the University of Sussex and
currently teaches practical filmmaking skills and theory courses. Her film U Know Them By Their
Fruit (2013) screened recently at Central School of Art and Design in London, and it is also available
to view on the Journal of Media Practice’s Screenworks. Her presentation today is part of a larger
project with the working title Womb, Home, Heaven.
Tony Gammidge is an artist, filmmaker, art therapist and lecturer on the Inclusive Arts Practice MA
at Brighton University. He has exhibited his work and screened his films extensively in the UK,
Europe and the USA as well as speak and present work at numerous international and national
conferences and symposiums. As well as teaching at the university he has worked as an art
therapist in adult mental health services in the NHS and within the criminal justice system.
For the past seven years he has been running video and animation projects on secure units, in
mental health settings and in prisons making short films collaboratively with service users and
prisoners. He has made over 20 short films with participants of which 10 of them have won Koestler
awards. www.tonygammidge.com