Books by Dawn Mannay
Co-authored by an international team of experts across disciplines, this important book is one of... more Co-authored by an international team of experts across disciplines, this important book is one of the first to demonstrate the enormous benefit creative methods offer for education research.
You do not have to be an artist to be creative, and the book encourages students, researchers and practitioners to discover and consider new ways to explore the field of education. It illustrates how using creative methods, such as poetic inquiry, comics, theatre and animation, can support learning and illuminate participation and engagement. Bridging academia and practice, the book offers:
• practical advice and tips on how to use creative methods in education research;
• numerous case studies from around the world providing real-life examples of creative research methods in education practice;
• reflective discussion questions to support learning.
The second, thoroughly revised and expanded, edition of The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Meth... more The second, thoroughly revised and expanded, edition of The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods presents a wide-ranging exploration and overview of the field today. As in its first edition, the Handbook does not aim to present a consistent view or voice, but rather to exemplify diversity and contradictions in perspectives and techniques. The selection of chapters from the first edition have been fully updated to reflect current developments. New chapters to the second edition cover key topics including picture-sorting techniques, creative methods using artefacts, visual framing analysis, therapeutic uses of images, and various emerging digital technologies and online practices. At the core of all contributions are theoretical and methodological debates about the meanings and study of the visual, presented in vibrant accounts of research design, analytical techniques, fieldwork encounters and data presentation. This handbook presents a unique survey of the discipline that will be essential reading for scholars and students across the social and behavioural sciences, arts and humanities, and far beyond these disciplinary boundaries.
Despite a proliferation of legislative action in response to differential outcomes, the relative ... more Despite a proliferation of legislative action in response to differential outcomes, the relative educational, employment and lifecourse disadvantages of individuals who have experienced the care system remains a pressing issue of widespread international concern. In Wales, a significant body of work has been produced on and with care-experienced children and young people. This edited collection attempts to highlight these valuable insights in a single volume, with contributions from well-established and early career scholars working in different traditions-including education, psychology, policy studies, sociology and social work-to provide a unique opportunity for reflection across disciplinary boundaries and shed new light on common problems and opportunities stimulated by research in the field of social care. The volume introduces a range of contexts and sites-including the home, the school, alternative educational institutions, contact centres, and the natural environment-and reflexively explores changes and continuities within the political and geographical landscape that constitutes Wales. Each chapter introduces insights, reflections and recommendations about the care system and its impacts, which will be useful for readers across geographical contexts who are concerned with improving the lives of children, young people and wider family networks.
Traditional research discourses continue to present academic work as rational, detached, objectiv... more Traditional research discourses continue to present academic work as rational, detached, objective and free from emotion. This volume argues that the presentation of research as ‘objective’ conceals the subject positions of researchers, and the emotional imperatives that often drive research. The collection engages with the emotional experiences of researchers working in different traditions, contexts and sites, and demonstrates their centrality in data production, analysis, dissemination and ethical practice.
This edited volume offers contributions from a range of well-established and early career scholars who argue for an emotional rebellion in the academic world. The authors reflect on their own experiences of research, generously sharing their approach to their craft, and the uncertainties, concerns, enjoyments, and questions it entails. The contributors are based in a range of disciplines across the humanities, social sciences and STEM, and in the museum sector. This provides a unique opportunity for reflection on differences between and similarities across disciplinary boundaries, shedding new light on common problems and opportunities stimulated by emotion in research.
The collection demonstrates how emotion can be valuable and meaningful in the activities of research, reflection and dissemination: offering authenticity to the academic voice, bringing clarity to interpretive biases, producing engaging outputs which connect with diverse readerships, and potentially reshaping disciplinary foundations and relations. Emotion and the Researcher: Sites, Subjectivities and Relationships will be an invaluable companion for researchers, postgraduate students and other academics with an interest in the emotional elements of conflict, negotiation, relationality and reflexivity, within and beyond the research encounter.
Los métodos visuales, narrativos y creativos de investigación se están convirtiendo actualmente e... more Los métodos visuales, narrativos y creativos de investigación se están convirtiendo actualmente en temas de interés clave. Se reconoce que tienen sin duda el potencial de evocar una comprensión empática de las maneras que tienen otras personas de experimentar sus mundos. El libro examina las prácticas y el valor de los enfoques visuales como una herramienta cualitativa en el campo de las Ciencias Sociales y las disciplinas vinculadas a las mismas: antropología, sociología, psicología, educación y estudios culturales. Aunque se centra en el uso de los enfoques visuales, el uso en el título de los términos narrativos y creativos simboliza el compromiso de incorporar lo visual dentro de marcos más amplios. Las imágenes visuales, como formas emergentes de divulgación y creación, exploran espacios más allá de los académicos tradicionales. Además, buena parte del trabajo creativo se emprende para lograr proyectos de justicia social, tratando de involucrar la emotividad de la audiencia. El libro constituye una lectura esencial para quienes estén interesados en investigar con métodos visuales y creativos participativos. Basándose en una amplia bibliografía clásica y contemporánea, y excelentemente escrito, el libro ofrece a los científicos sociales –desde aquellos que están en los últimos años de sus estudios de grado hasta los investigadores cualitativos y otros académicos– una guía creativa y accesible sobre las posibilidades y retos de trabajar con estos métodos, con un enfoque multidisciplinar, y con especial atención a cuestiones ligadas a la teoría, la etodología, la ética y la difusión de materiales
Visual research methods are quickly becoming key topics of interest within the social sciences, a... more Visual research methods are quickly becoming key topics of interest within the social sciences, and they are now widely recognised as having the potential to evoke emphatic understanding of the ways in which other people experience their worlds. For this reason, there has been an explosion in the use of visual techniques of data production, and in this book the author offers a reflective, in-depth account of these methods to inform and support researchers from across the higher education spectrum.
The book is concerned with the process of applying visual methods as a tool of inquiry from design, to production, to analysis and dissemination. Drawing on research projects which reflect real world situations, the author methodically guides you through the research process in detail, enabling you to examine and understand the practices and value of visual and narrative approaches as effective qualitative tools in the field of social science and related disciplines.
Key topics include:
techniques of data production, including collage, mapping, drawing and photographs;
the practicalities of application;
the positioning of the researcher;
interpretation of visual data;
ethical issues;
images and narratives in public spaces;
evaluative analysis of creative approaches.
Visual, Narrative and Creative Research Methods will be an invaluable companion for students and postgraduates aiming to develop their knowledge of the topic. It will also support lecturers and researchers with an interest in visual and creative methods and qualitative research more generally.
This edited collection ‘Our Changing Land: Revisiting Gender, Class and Identity in Contemporary ... more This edited collection ‘Our Changing Land: Revisiting Gender, Class and Identity in Contemporary Wales’ is structured around the central theme of revisiting. The manuscript sets out to revisit seminal writings about Wales and Welsh life from the 1990s reflexively exploring the changes and continuities in the nation across this temporal space. The last two decades have seen big changes within a small nation; and the distinctiveness of Wales, in terms of its political life and culture, has grown considerably. Nevertheless, beneath the imagery of the definitive nation, Wales remains a complex and divided land and the collection will explore the themes of continuity, change, unity and division that actively contribute to the making of contemporary Wales.
In order to revisit, the collection will be drawing from two key sources, namely early editions of the journal Contemporary Wales (Journal Editors - Paul Chaney and Erin Royles - University of Wales Press) and the edited book Our Sister’s Land: the changing identities of women in Wales (Book Editors Jane Aaron, Teresa Rees Sandra Betts and Moira Vincentelli). Started in 1987, Contemporary Wales is an annual English-language journal containing academic articles and reviews relating to politics, history and current affairs it is arguably the leading journal of modern Welsh public and private lives; and the current collection will revisit carefully selected articles published around the early 1990s. Our Sister’s Land (1994) argued for a focus on Welsh women because of their increasingly importance to the world of paid work; while retaining their roles and responsibilities in the home. The book demonstrated the ways in which women's lives are very diverse, and at the time of its publication the changing identity of Welsh women as they managed the balance between private and public lives had been relatively uncharted. For this reason the text was ground-breaking in bringing together a collection of interdisciplinary research papers on the changing identity of women in Wales.
The pattern of family life has continued to shift since these seminal publications and it is important to revisit and re-examine the lives of men and women in Wales, this is why Our Changing Land draws from both Contemporary Wales and Our Sister’s Land; allowing for a reflection on gender in a wider sense. Drawing from the work of both leading writers and emerging academics, in Welsh history, social policy, education, sociology, psychology and geography, this edited collection examines what is distinctive about Wales and Welshness in an interdisciplinary yet comprehensive manner.
News Articles by Dawn Mannay
It’s a time of new uniforms, pencil cases and chatter in corridors – children and young people ar... more It’s a time of new uniforms, pencil cases and chatter in corridors – children and young people are going back to school for another year. While some will be excited at the new lessons or reuniting with friends, others will be dreading a far less positive and rewarding experience.
There are pervasive gaps in attainment at all levels of education between young people in care and those not in care, and young people in care often leave school with less qualifications. National attainment data shows that 23% of young people who have experienced care in Wales alone obtain five GCSEs (grade A–C), compared to 60% of the total student population.
Educational disadvantage continues into higher education too, with lower rates of university access and completion. It has been reported that only 2% of young people who have been in care enter higher education – compared to about 50% of the general population in Wales. This impacts on their engagement with the labour market later in life too.
Despite government strategies introduced to improve the experiences of children and young people in care, their school lives can still be punctuated with difficulties. But these should not be attributed to individual pupils in a culture of blame.
My work has always been interested in marginalised communities and the need to counter the homoge... more My work has always been interested in marginalised communities and the need to counter the homogenising and demonising accounts that circulate in the media sphere, and in turn inform our everyday thoughts about people, place and poverty. The research that I have been involved with has often drawn on visual and creative forms of data production to try and negotiate a more participatory relationship and enable conversations about topics that I would not, perhaps, of raised, but which are of central importance in the lives of communities. More recently, I have been concerned with how these messages are disseminated beyond the confines of academic reports and publications, in ways that have impact but are also considered in terms of ethical representation.
The Conversation, Sep 6, 2016
At times, it can feel like adults are speaking a completely different language when talking to yo... more At times, it can feel like adults are speaking a completely different language when talking to young people. Even small generational divides feel like gaping chasms as each party tries to relate their experiences in a way the other will understand. This is not just a parental matter: young people are often disregarded as stereotypes of their generation – millennials, hipsters, hoodies – by much of society. But young people have now and always will have a powerful voice.
A range of valuable research conducted with young people has enabled young people to collaborate in research projects and share their views, but these studies are still often designed by adults to their own agendas. So rather than signing up reviewers for a new collection of essays on gender, class and identity in Wales we were publishing we decided to instead ask young people to critique the book, tell us what we got wrong, what was missing and what was important to them.
Papers by Dawn Mannay
Advances in gender research, Sep 27, 2018
Abstract Motherhood and mothering are conceived in relation to classed hierarchies through which ... more Abstract Motherhood and mothering are conceived in relation to classed hierarchies through which those living in poverty become characterized by “otherhood” and “othering.” This positioning leaves them vulnerable to overt and indirect forms of criticism, surveillance, and policing from family, friends, professionals, and strangers; against a background of demonization of particular types of mothers and mothering practices in the wider mediascape. This chapter draws on 3 studies, involving 28 participants, which explored their journeys into the space of parenthood and their everyday experiences. The participants all resided in low-income locales. Many participants had resided in homeless hostels and mother and baby units before being placed in local authority housing or low-grade rented accommodation. The studies all employed forms of visual ethnography, including photoelicitation, timelines, emotion stickers, collage, and sandboxing. Participants discussed different forms of surveillance where other people were characterized as “watching what I’m doing, watching how I’m doing it.” These forms of watching ranged from the structured policing encountered in mother-and-baby units to more informal comments from passers-by or passengers on a bus journey; and an awareness of how mothers in state housing are depicted in the media. These interactions were sometimes met with resistance. At other times, they were simply another incident that participants negotiated in a growing tapestry of disrespect and devaluation. This chapter argues that these discourses demonize and alienate mothers living on the margins, making already difficult journeys a constant struggle in the moral maze of contemporary motherhood and its accompanying conceptualizations of “otherhood.”
Qualitative Social Work
There is evidence that engagement with the arts can engender transformative effects on young peop... more There is evidence that engagement with the arts can engender transformative effects on young people’s views of themselves and their futures, this can be particularly useful for children and young people in care. This paper draws on a case study of an arts-based programme delivered in Wales, UK. Field observations of the arts-based sessions were conducted, and the participant sample included young people in foster care (n = 8), foster carers (n = 7) and project facilitators (n = 3). The study employed interviews, observations, reflexive diaries, and metaphor work to explore the subjective accounts of these different stakeholders. This provided an insight into their experience of being involved with the arts-based programme, the impacts of this involvement, and what steps they felt could be taken to improve the model. The paper argues that arts and cultural engagement can be transformative in improving the confidence and social connectedness of young people in foster care, but that at...
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, 2016
Purpose À This chapter reflects on the process of conducting qualitative research as an indigenou... more Purpose À This chapter reflects on the process of conducting qualitative research as an indigenous researcher, drawing from two studies based in south Wales (the United Kingdom). The chapter not only explores the advantages of similarity in relation to trust, access, gender and understandings of locality, but it also complicates this position by examining the problem of familiarity. Methodology/approach À The studies, one doctoral research and one an undergraduate dissertation project, both took a qualitative approach and introduced visual methods of data production including collages,
Children and Youth Services Review, 2021
Abstract This paper considers the support available to care leavers during the Covid-19 pandemic ... more Abstract This paper considers the support available to care leavers during the Covid-19 pandemic from their corporate parents. The paper contributes to a developing evidence base concerned with social work efforts to adapt and maintain support provision during the unprecedented circumstances, and provides insight into how such support was perceived and experienced. Funded by Voices from Care Cymru and Cardiff University, a qualitative, mixed method study was conducted which included a survey of Welsh Local Authority professionals (n = 22) and interviews with Welsh care-experienced young people aged 17–24 (n = 17). The findings of this paper show the propensity of corporate parents to provide protection against the adversities of the pandemic, or to compound difficulties. While some young people reported being both practically and emotionally supported, for others corporate parenting support was perceived as unavailable, unhelpful and / or uncaring. The Covid-19 pandemic provides a unique lens to consider the strengths, flaws and future opportunities for corporate parenting. The findings emphasise the need for parity of support for young people leaving care and consideration of national, local and individual responses is included. Yet consistent with findings pre-dating the pandemic, the findings reaffirm the enduring importance of both relationships and resources in ensuring good support for care leavers.
Visual Studies, 2017
Visual methodologies, sand and psychoanalysis: employing creative participatory techniques to exp... more Visual methodologies, sand and psychoanalysis: employing creative participatory techniques to explore the educational experiences of mature students and children in care DAWN MANNAY, ELEANOR STAPLES AND VICTORIA EDWARDS Social science research has witnessed an increasing move towards visual methods of data production. However, some visual techniques remain pariah sites because of their association with psychoanalysis; and a reluctance to engage with psychoanalytically informed approaches outside of therapy-based settings. This paper introduces the method of 'sandboxing', which was developed from the psychoanalytical approach of the 'world technique'. 'Sandboxing' provides an opportunity for participants to create three-dimensional scenes in sand-trays, employing miniature figures and everyday objects. Data are presented from two studies conducted in Wales, UK. The first, exploring mature students' accounts of higher education, and the second, exploring the educational experiences of children and young people in public care. The paper argues that psychoanalytical work can be adapted to enable a distinctive, valuable and ethical tool of qualitative inquiry; and illustrates how 'sandboxing' engendered opportunities to fight familiarity, enabled participatory frameworks, and contributed to informed policy and practice.
YOUNG, 2021
This article explores the experiences of young people leaving state care during COVID-19. Twenty-... more This article explores the experiences of young people leaving state care during COVID-19. Twenty-one young people, predominantly from Wales, engaged in semi-structured interviews and/or contributed poems and artwork conveying their experiences of the pandemic. The data generated offered insights into young people’s daily lives, including their routines and relationships, as well as access to resources and services. The study found stark disparity in young people’s experiences, with some reassured by support responses, and others feeling neglected and forgotten. As an already disadvantaged group, the challenges presented by COVID-19 further hinder young people’s transitions to adulthood. The ‘massive struggles’ faced by some young people reflect immediate difficulties which also have the potential for longer-term impacts. The recommendations of the study, informed by care-experienced young people, seek to positively influence policy and practice.
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Books by Dawn Mannay
You do not have to be an artist to be creative, and the book encourages students, researchers and practitioners to discover and consider new ways to explore the field of education. It illustrates how using creative methods, such as poetic inquiry, comics, theatre and animation, can support learning and illuminate participation and engagement. Bridging academia and practice, the book offers:
• practical advice and tips on how to use creative methods in education research;
• numerous case studies from around the world providing real-life examples of creative research methods in education practice;
• reflective discussion questions to support learning.
This edited volume offers contributions from a range of well-established and early career scholars who argue for an emotional rebellion in the academic world. The authors reflect on their own experiences of research, generously sharing their approach to their craft, and the uncertainties, concerns, enjoyments, and questions it entails. The contributors are based in a range of disciplines across the humanities, social sciences and STEM, and in the museum sector. This provides a unique opportunity for reflection on differences between and similarities across disciplinary boundaries, shedding new light on common problems and opportunities stimulated by emotion in research.
The collection demonstrates how emotion can be valuable and meaningful in the activities of research, reflection and dissemination: offering authenticity to the academic voice, bringing clarity to interpretive biases, producing engaging outputs which connect with diverse readerships, and potentially reshaping disciplinary foundations and relations. Emotion and the Researcher: Sites, Subjectivities and Relationships will be an invaluable companion for researchers, postgraduate students and other academics with an interest in the emotional elements of conflict, negotiation, relationality and reflexivity, within and beyond the research encounter.
The book is concerned with the process of applying visual methods as a tool of inquiry from design, to production, to analysis and dissemination. Drawing on research projects which reflect real world situations, the author methodically guides you through the research process in detail, enabling you to examine and understand the practices and value of visual and narrative approaches as effective qualitative tools in the field of social science and related disciplines.
Key topics include:
techniques of data production, including collage, mapping, drawing and photographs;
the practicalities of application;
the positioning of the researcher;
interpretation of visual data;
ethical issues;
images and narratives in public spaces;
evaluative analysis of creative approaches.
Visual, Narrative and Creative Research Methods will be an invaluable companion for students and postgraduates aiming to develop their knowledge of the topic. It will also support lecturers and researchers with an interest in visual and creative methods and qualitative research more generally.
In order to revisit, the collection will be drawing from two key sources, namely early editions of the journal Contemporary Wales (Journal Editors - Paul Chaney and Erin Royles - University of Wales Press) and the edited book Our Sister’s Land: the changing identities of women in Wales (Book Editors Jane Aaron, Teresa Rees Sandra Betts and Moira Vincentelli). Started in 1987, Contemporary Wales is an annual English-language journal containing academic articles and reviews relating to politics, history and current affairs it is arguably the leading journal of modern Welsh public and private lives; and the current collection will revisit carefully selected articles published around the early 1990s. Our Sister’s Land (1994) argued for a focus on Welsh women because of their increasingly importance to the world of paid work; while retaining their roles and responsibilities in the home. The book demonstrated the ways in which women's lives are very diverse, and at the time of its publication the changing identity of Welsh women as they managed the balance between private and public lives had been relatively uncharted. For this reason the text was ground-breaking in bringing together a collection of interdisciplinary research papers on the changing identity of women in Wales.
The pattern of family life has continued to shift since these seminal publications and it is important to revisit and re-examine the lives of men and women in Wales, this is why Our Changing Land draws from both Contemporary Wales and Our Sister’s Land; allowing for a reflection on gender in a wider sense. Drawing from the work of both leading writers and emerging academics, in Welsh history, social policy, education, sociology, psychology and geography, this edited collection examines what is distinctive about Wales and Welshness in an interdisciplinary yet comprehensive manner.
News Articles by Dawn Mannay
There are pervasive gaps in attainment at all levels of education between young people in care and those not in care, and young people in care often leave school with less qualifications. National attainment data shows that 23% of young people who have experienced care in Wales alone obtain five GCSEs (grade A–C), compared to 60% of the total student population.
Educational disadvantage continues into higher education too, with lower rates of university access and completion. It has been reported that only 2% of young people who have been in care enter higher education – compared to about 50% of the general population in Wales. This impacts on their engagement with the labour market later in life too.
Despite government strategies introduced to improve the experiences of children and young people in care, their school lives can still be punctuated with difficulties. But these should not be attributed to individual pupils in a culture of blame.
A range of valuable research conducted with young people has enabled young people to collaborate in research projects and share their views, but these studies are still often designed by adults to their own agendas. So rather than signing up reviewers for a new collection of essays on gender, class and identity in Wales we were publishing we decided to instead ask young people to critique the book, tell us what we got wrong, what was missing and what was important to them.
Papers by Dawn Mannay
You do not have to be an artist to be creative, and the book encourages students, researchers and practitioners to discover and consider new ways to explore the field of education. It illustrates how using creative methods, such as poetic inquiry, comics, theatre and animation, can support learning and illuminate participation and engagement. Bridging academia and practice, the book offers:
• practical advice and tips on how to use creative methods in education research;
• numerous case studies from around the world providing real-life examples of creative research methods in education practice;
• reflective discussion questions to support learning.
This edited volume offers contributions from a range of well-established and early career scholars who argue for an emotional rebellion in the academic world. The authors reflect on their own experiences of research, generously sharing their approach to their craft, and the uncertainties, concerns, enjoyments, and questions it entails. The contributors are based in a range of disciplines across the humanities, social sciences and STEM, and in the museum sector. This provides a unique opportunity for reflection on differences between and similarities across disciplinary boundaries, shedding new light on common problems and opportunities stimulated by emotion in research.
The collection demonstrates how emotion can be valuable and meaningful in the activities of research, reflection and dissemination: offering authenticity to the academic voice, bringing clarity to interpretive biases, producing engaging outputs which connect with diverse readerships, and potentially reshaping disciplinary foundations and relations. Emotion and the Researcher: Sites, Subjectivities and Relationships will be an invaluable companion for researchers, postgraduate students and other academics with an interest in the emotional elements of conflict, negotiation, relationality and reflexivity, within and beyond the research encounter.
The book is concerned with the process of applying visual methods as a tool of inquiry from design, to production, to analysis and dissemination. Drawing on research projects which reflect real world situations, the author methodically guides you through the research process in detail, enabling you to examine and understand the practices and value of visual and narrative approaches as effective qualitative tools in the field of social science and related disciplines.
Key topics include:
techniques of data production, including collage, mapping, drawing and photographs;
the practicalities of application;
the positioning of the researcher;
interpretation of visual data;
ethical issues;
images and narratives in public spaces;
evaluative analysis of creative approaches.
Visual, Narrative and Creative Research Methods will be an invaluable companion for students and postgraduates aiming to develop their knowledge of the topic. It will also support lecturers and researchers with an interest in visual and creative methods and qualitative research more generally.
In order to revisit, the collection will be drawing from two key sources, namely early editions of the journal Contemporary Wales (Journal Editors - Paul Chaney and Erin Royles - University of Wales Press) and the edited book Our Sister’s Land: the changing identities of women in Wales (Book Editors Jane Aaron, Teresa Rees Sandra Betts and Moira Vincentelli). Started in 1987, Contemporary Wales is an annual English-language journal containing academic articles and reviews relating to politics, history and current affairs it is arguably the leading journal of modern Welsh public and private lives; and the current collection will revisit carefully selected articles published around the early 1990s. Our Sister’s Land (1994) argued for a focus on Welsh women because of their increasingly importance to the world of paid work; while retaining their roles and responsibilities in the home. The book demonstrated the ways in which women's lives are very diverse, and at the time of its publication the changing identity of Welsh women as they managed the balance between private and public lives had been relatively uncharted. For this reason the text was ground-breaking in bringing together a collection of interdisciplinary research papers on the changing identity of women in Wales.
The pattern of family life has continued to shift since these seminal publications and it is important to revisit and re-examine the lives of men and women in Wales, this is why Our Changing Land draws from both Contemporary Wales and Our Sister’s Land; allowing for a reflection on gender in a wider sense. Drawing from the work of both leading writers and emerging academics, in Welsh history, social policy, education, sociology, psychology and geography, this edited collection examines what is distinctive about Wales and Welshness in an interdisciplinary yet comprehensive manner.
There are pervasive gaps in attainment at all levels of education between young people in care and those not in care, and young people in care often leave school with less qualifications. National attainment data shows that 23% of young people who have experienced care in Wales alone obtain five GCSEs (grade A–C), compared to 60% of the total student population.
Educational disadvantage continues into higher education too, with lower rates of university access and completion. It has been reported that only 2% of young people who have been in care enter higher education – compared to about 50% of the general population in Wales. This impacts on their engagement with the labour market later in life too.
Despite government strategies introduced to improve the experiences of children and young people in care, their school lives can still be punctuated with difficulties. But these should not be attributed to individual pupils in a culture of blame.
A range of valuable research conducted with young people has enabled young people to collaborate in research projects and share their views, but these studies are still often designed by adults to their own agendas. So rather than signing up reviewers for a new collection of essays on gender, class and identity in Wales we were publishing we decided to instead ask young people to critique the book, tell us what we got wrong, what was missing and what was important to them.
The project, ‘Improving the educational experiences and attainment of looked after children and young people’ involved a series of events, workshops, consultations, and the development of a range of materials to deliver some important #messagestoschools.
Consultations with care experienced children and young people, as well as a poetry competition for those in care and care leavers, led to the development of key #messagestoschools which were presented in a film, a music video and a series of posters.
The group meets regularly and offers care experienced young people the opportunity to meet together for social events, educational opportunities and a range of activities. In January and February 2019 we worked with the group make our first collaborative film #FromYoungPeopleForYoungPeople – Find Your Tribe.
In the summer of 2019, we met up again to think about what other messages were important and who should hear these messages. We started by brainstorming ideas and deciding on the main messages then got to work on scripting and creating visual elements for the film. We used story boards to try and put together the group’s ideas then experimented with drawing, stickers and fuzzy felts.
The original images made by the group were used as the basis for the film animation, bringing to life the messages the young people wanted to share with the help of Like an Egg. These messages were created by young people based on their experiences. The film represents their ideas about how they would like to work with social workers in the future. These are their #messagestosocialworkers. We hope you enjoy the film.
Dawn Mannay - School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University @dawnmannay
Rachael Vaughan – CASCADE: Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre, Cardiff University @VaughanRach
Helen Davies - South West Wales Reaching Wider Partnership - Swansea University @ReachingWiderSU
Emma Jones - Roots Foundation Wales @RootsWales
Mannay, D. ed. 2016. Our changing land: revisiting gender, class and identity in contemporary Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
For information about the book please see
http://www.uwp.co.uk/editions/9781783168842
Mannay, D. ed. 2016. Our changing land: revisiting gender, class and identity in contemporary Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
For information about the book please see
http://www.uwp.co.uk/editions/9781783168842
Mannay, D. ed. 2016. Our changing land: revisiting gender, class and identity in contemporary Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
For information about the book please see
http://www.uwp.co.uk/editions/9781783168842
The project was commissioned by the Welsh Government and developed with the project partners - The Fostering Network, Voices from Care Cymru and Spice Innovations.
The songs were developed by Ministry of Life in association with young people and the artists Jamie Feeney aka Sapien, Chantelle Barani and Rowan Edwards. The videos were produced by Magnus Oboh at TAB Media.
Thanks go to all of the looked after children and young people that took part in the project from north, south and west Wales. Without their input this film would not have been possible.
Full Research Report: Mannay, D., Staples, E., Hallett, S., Roberts, L., Rees, A., Evans, R. and Andrews, D. (2015) Understanding the educational experiences and opinions, attainment, achievement and aspirations of looked after children in Wales. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Available at http://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/understanding-educational-experiences-opinions-attainment-achievement-aspirations-looked-after-children-wales/?lang=en
For further information about this research please contact [email protected]
The project was commissioned by the Welsh Government and developed with the project partners - The Fostering Network, Voices from Care Cymru and Spice Innovations.
The songs were developed by Ministry of Life in association with young people and the artists Jamie Feeney aka Sapien, Chantelle Barani and Rowan Edwards. The videos were produced by Magnus Oboh at TAB Media. The dance featured in Chantelle Barani’s song, Never Look Behind, was choreographed and performed by Nia-hedd Morgan.
Thanks go to all of the looked after children and young people that took part in the project from north, south and west Wales. Without their input this film would not have been possible.
Full Research Report: Mannay, D., Staples, E., Hallett, S., Roberts, L., Rees, A., Evans, R. and Andrews, D. (2015) Understanding the educational experiences and opinions, attainment, achievement and aspirations of looked after children in Wales. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Available at http://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/understanding-educational-experiences-opinions-attainment-achievement-aspirations-looked-after-children-wales/?lang=en
For further information about this research please contact [email protected]
The project was commissioned by the Welsh Government and developed with the project partners - The Fostering Network, Voices from Care Cymru and Spice Innovations.
The songs were developed by Ministry of Life in association with young people and the artists Jamie Feeney aka Sapien, Chantelle Barani and Rowan Edwards. The videos were produced by Magnus Oboh at TAB Media.
Thanks go to all of the looked after children and young people that took part in the project from north, south and west Wales. Without their input this film would not have been possible.
Full Research Report: Mannay, D., Staples, E., Hallett, S., Roberts, L., Rees, A., Evans, R. and Andrews, D. (2015) Understanding the educational experiences and opinions, attainment, achievement and aspirations of looked after children in Wales. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Available at http://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/understanding-educational-experiences-opinions-attainment-achievement-aspirations-looked-after-children-wales/?lang=en
For further information about this research please contact [email protected]
In the introduction to this section, Hooper (2012) established the ways in which domestic abuse remains an insidious presence in the darker side of family life. Domestic abuse has a substantial financial cost to the economy (Walby, 2004) and such violence can also disrupt typical developmental trajectories through psychobiological effects, posttraumatic stress disorder and cognitive consequences (Jarvinen at al, 2008; Margolin and Gordis, 2000).
Violence was not my initial research focus, nonetheless, as Rock (2007, p.30) contends, there is a ‘need to remain open to the features that cannot be listed in advance of the study’ and this family trouble was an invasive element in the construction of femininity (see Mannay, 2011). The normalisation of male violence was central in the participants’ accounts where masculinity was tied to aggression, and male violence was naturalised.
Adult recollections of violence in childhood supported Henriques et al’s (1998) contention that the question of who we are is tied to the memory of who we have been and the imagination of what we might become. In this way male violence had a pervasive hold over the participants, permeating their everyday lives and aspirations, becoming normalised, and engendering intergenerational journeys that threaten to impinge on their daughters’ trajectories.
Time: 5–6pm, including a Q&A session. Refreshments will be available from 4:30pm.
Price: £0.00
Date: July 19, 2016
The workshop focuses on the potentialities and challenges associated with the visual exploring the ways in which the visual image can become silenced; and how such silencing can negate the participatory potential of visual studies. In exploring these challenges the semester also highlights the salience of the visual for ‘fighting familiarity’; and the importance of elicitation, and auteur theory, for allowing a space for the subjective meaning making of research participants. The relative freedom of visual data production and the ways in which it can engender forms of defamiliarization is examined as a useful tool of inquiry but also problemetised in relation to the ethics of visual, psychological and cultural studies.
The workshop asks you to question the power of the visual image, its potential for participatory practice and the way that images can be viewed as social practices that positions individuals in particular ways; and invites forms of understanding and emotive responses. The presentation of the material will set out current debates in visual, social and cultural psychology and the related activities are designed to help you move beyond the published academic texts; and invite you to analyse and interrogate original images that you collect and produce: acting as, and becoming, a critical visual researcher. The activity based aspects of the programme will involve the completion of some preparatory tasks and fieldwork trips to generate new forms of visual data in Neuchatel.
In the lead up to Opera for the Unknown Woman, Melanie Wilson and Fuel will host Salon’s in Cardiff, Coventry, Huddersfield and London.
The Salon, made popular in 17th and 18th century Europe, were informal spaces for social, literary and political discussion, often populated by women open to an exchange of ideas.
We invite women and men to join a Salon to gain insight into this special creative process, contribute to the conversation that will influence the production and meet new people over a drink.
Each Salon will consider a different theme from climate change, contemporary opera and digital art to the fight for gender equality. We will hear from members of the creative team, scientists, academics, and you, as we explore how this science fiction, multi-media opera will create a call to action.
9 Mar | 6.30-8pm | Wales Millenium Centre Cardiff (Sony Room)
Melanie Wilson will be joined by Dr Dawn Mannay, Cardiff University, in a conversation chaired by Fuel Co-Director, Louise Blackwell
15 Mar | 7-8.30pm | Warwick Arts Centre Coventry (Ensemble Room)
Melanie Wilson will be joined by Dr Gaynor Sharp, SamphireSTEM Warwickshire, in a conversation chaired by Fuel Co-Director, Louise Blackwell
We hope you can join us at this free event, email [email protected] to book a place
Commissioned by Wales Millennium Centre for Festival of Voice and Yorkshire Festival in association with Warwick Arts Centre. Funded by Arts Council England & Arts Council of Wales. Supported by the Fidelio Trust and Hinrichsen Foundation. Development commissioned by Warwick Arts Centre and funded by Arts Council England & PRSF for Music Foundation. Developed in association with Opera North Projects. Image: Manuel Vason @DARC.media and Stem Design.
Location: Celtic Manor, Wales, UK
More Info: Presented with Dawn Mannay
Event Date: Dec 10, 2013
Organization: Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE)
Research Interests: Education, Adult Education, Higher Education, Mature Students, and Mature students in Higher Education
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Contemporary social science research is often concerned to engage with and promote particular forms of postmodern and innovative data production, such as photo-elicitation, autoethnography or free association interviews. This fascination with the latest and greatest techniques has been accompanied by an ever more fragmented range of research methods training for students where the week-by-week shift between approaches engenders a disjointed view of becoming the researcher. This individualisation of techniques has set up rival camps and critiques where the common ground of being embedded in traditional ethnography is often forgotten. For researchers, who began their academic careers in the ethnographic tradition, there is an appreciation of the holistic base of enquiry from which a family of methods can be effectively employed. However, more recently qualitative researchers have been distracted by ‘the technique’; a distraction that can blind them to the occupation of ethnography. Concurrently, there have been shifts in the social and economic expectations placed on qualitative inquiry that have acted to close down spaces of ethnographic teaching and practice. In response, this article focuses on the importance of the ‘waiting field’; an opportunity to explore the times where real lives carry on before they make room for the intrusion of the data production of ‘the technique’ and remind us that much qualitative research is, in fact, an ethnographic undertaking: one that encompasses the researcher within and beyond the field.
This panel session introduces three presentations that explore both the opportunities, and the ethical and practical difficulties, raised by visual research approaches. Drawing on studies that employed the techniques of sandboxing, collaging and film making, the panel considers the visual as a vehicle for participatory research whilst acknowledging the power relations inherent in the processes of design, production and dissemination. Each presentation focuses on one of these three aspects of the research process.
Dawn Mannay discusses design by reflecting on the sandboxing approach, ‘the world technique’; and responds to the argument that therapeutic methods should not be taken out of the consulting room. Janet Fink presents insights into data production drawing on community based inquiry and the process of creating collages. Helen Lomax considers the challenges of employing a participatory approach to the editing and dissemination of filmed data, images and text. Together the three papers respond to current debates around visual methodologies, participatory research and situated ethics in work with marginalised communities.
The paper is drawn from the doctoral research of the two presenters. In her four-year, Economic and Social Research Council funded study, Dawn Mannay focused on the everyday lives of mothers and daughters residing in a marginalised area in urban south Wales, UK. The research employed visual and narrative techniques of data production (Mannay, 2010) and was interested in the stigma of place, barriers to education, gendered inequalities and the role of social class (Mannay, 2011; 2013). Melanie Morgan worked in similar marginalised Welsh locales and applied psychosocial interviews to explore the subjectivities of working-class mothers in higher education; and the mechanisms and strategies this group of women use in constructing, negotiating and managing identity/subjectivity within university: and the motivation for pursuing academic success despite the emotional and practical conflicts of doing so (Mannay and Morgan, 2013). In this paper we offer reflections from our research diaries that document this waiting time; and the discoveries of others, and of self, doing ethnography in waiting spaces; which we conceptualise as the ‘waiting field’.
Keywords - data production, ethnography, fieldwork, mothers, participatory methods, psychosocial, reflexivity, visual methods, higher education, mature students.
References
Mannay, D. 2010. Making the familiar strange: Can visual research methods render the familiar setting more perceptible?. Qualitative Research 10(1):91-111.
Mannay, D. 2011. Taking refuge in the branches of a guava tree: the difficulty of retaining consenting and non-consenting participants’ confidentiality as an indigenous researcher. Qualitative Inquiry 17(10):962-964.
Mannay, D. 2013. 'Who put that on there … why why why?' Power games and participatory techniques of visual data production. Visual Studies 28(2):136-146
Mannay, D. and Morgan, M. 2013. Anatomies of inequality: considering the emotional cost of aiming higher for marginalised, mature, mothers re-entering education. Journal of Adult and Continuing Education 19(1):57-75