My role includes facilitating co-produced or collaborative research projects with groups or individuals who are often excluded from research agendas. I'm particularly interested in child and adolescent mental health, and, like everyone in the Institute for Social Justice, I'm keen to work on projects where research creates change. My academic background is in theatre and performance, where I have published research in scenography, theatre history, and cross-cultural performance. I have also worked as a children's and youth practitioner and a community artist. I now use my theatre and arts background to explore creative and trauma-aware research methods.
My areas of interest include:
- Co-production, particularly designing research agendas, arts-based research, and research impact
- Children and young people's experiences of mental health and mental health systems
- Neurodiversity and creativity
- Puppetry and puppet-making as research tools
- Scenographic space, research, and mental health
As an autistic academic, I am committed to neurodiversity research and advocacy, both in my own work and in higher education.
My research predominantly takes the form of co-produced projects with co-researchers with lived experience of mental health challenges. I focus on exploring creative methods for collaborative and co-produced creative and research experiences. My recent projects have included work on climate resilience, neurodiversity in higher education, evaluation of early intervention social care services, and mental health system trauma.
Some examples of recent projects include:
- 'Inclusive spaces': student-staff co-produced research project exploring the experiences of neurodivergent students (co-I)
- 'Puppetify!': project using puppet-making as a tool to explore questions of wellbeing and identity with children aged 6-10 years (P-I)
- 'Rooted in Crisis': international collaboration with geoscientists and games designers to create a new Table Top Role Play game that addresses climate change, adverse childhood experiences and trauma (contributor)
- 'Evaluation of early help services provided as part of the cluster collaborative in Leeds': evaluation of early interventions for at risk families in the children's social care system (contributor)
- 'The Forest': working with the Earth Arcade climate science communication project to develop a mindful exhibition space to discuss climate change with young people (co-I)
- 'Weathered Estates': co-produced performance project with Hull City of Culture exploring gender, identity and craft-based activism (P-I)
I am currently expanding my Puppetify! project to explore embodied experiences of mental health and identity. I am also writing Theatre & Neurodiversity for Bloomsbury's Theatre &… series and I'm in the process of launching a regional neurodivergent theatre makers forum.
I work closely with the Converge Evaluation and Research Team, a team of researchers with lived experience of mental health challenges based at York St John University.
