1 Rachel Handforth BA (Hons), PGCertRachel is a second year PhD student at Sheffield Hallam University. She is undertaking research which explores the career aspirations of women doctoral students, focusing on how these might change over the course of the doctorate. Her study aims to identify the factors which contribute to individuals' career aspirations, explore how disciplines and institutions influence individuals' aspirations and examine perceived barriers to women pursuing a career in academia. This qualitative study utilises a combination of interviews, diary entries and other narrative methods within a longitudinal study. Participants have been recruited from across disciplines and from two northern universities with different research profiles and priorities.Rachel also works as a part-time research assistant in the Humanities Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, conducting research on representations of gender in popular music. Her research interests include auto-ethnography, identity and narrative research methodologies.Carol is a reader in the Sheffield Institute of Education. She is involved in research leadership and staff mentoring within the department. Carol is convenor of the Higher Education Research Group, which includes specialist research themes on higher education policy, student engagement, access and transitions to higher education, pedagogic research, and research-informed teaching and learning.Carol is a further and higher education research specialist. Her current research interests include feminist approaches to education, gender and materiality, spatiality and education. Carol co-leads the Material Feminisms Reading Group, in conjunction with Professor Jessica Ringrose, (Institute of Education, London) and Professor Maggie MacLure (Manchester Metropolitan University). The reading group is an international constituency of material feminist scholars working to develop theoretical and empirical research collaborations. If you are interested in joining the group please contact Carol.Carol collaborates in research on, and theorisations of, student voice, students-asresearchers and student engagement. She is a member of the SRHE Student Experience Network and is involved in the RAISE network. AbstractThis article emerged as the product of a collaboration between two individuals at different stages of our academic careers, one a beginning researcher and the other a senior academic. Written as an experimental bricolage, the article weaves together two main threads to chart our engagements with feminist research and with writing practices, both of which we envisage as forms of feminist praxis. The red thread explores feminist research as a continuous accomplishment in which becomingfeminist is enacted through our different research narratives. The green thread employs diffraction, as an experimental practice to undo the normalised practices of academic writing by weaving together various kinds of texts. In its entangled quilting of the red and green threads, the article foregroun...
This article uses thematic qualitative analysis and techniques from corpus linguistics to interrogate the way that listeners interpret and make sense of Blurred Lines. The song was controversial upon its release as many listeners felt that it implied that even if women said they did not want sex, in fact, they did. Such issues of sexual consent are a key issue for feminist analysis, particularly within current debates about 'rape culture'. We investigated listeners' interpretations of the song, distributing an online questionnaire to over 1000 respondents. We found that most listeners either interpreted the song as relating to sexual consent and took offence, or felt that it was simply representative of the genre, and found the song unproblematic. However, a number of listeners expressed conflict in relation to the song, enjoying it musically but finding the lyrics particularly problematic. Our analysis investigates the language that respondents used to negotiate their relationships with the different elements of the song.
Considering mental health and wellbeing in postgraduate research: a critical reflection The First International Conference on the Mental Health and Wellbeing of Postgraduate Researchers was held in Brighton, UK, in May 2019. Attended by 195 delegates from 97 institutions in 11 countries, the conference included six keynote lectures and 55 other sessions that shared research findings and good practice initiatives from across the higher education sector. The level of engagement with the conference highlighted the extent to which mental health and well-being of postgraduate researchers (PGRs) has become a key concern for universities. This special issue on mental health and well-being in postgraduate research was inspired by the enthusiasm the conference revealed for reflection, discussion and engagement on the topic and sought to bring together a range of diverse disciplinary perspectives to explore issues relating to mental health and well-being in graduate and postdoctoral education. However, as it transpired, the compilation and publication of this special issue has coincided with a global pandemic in which mental health and well-being has become a central concern for all of us.The impact of COVID-19 has been extensive, affecting national economies as well as public health and drastically altering the everyday lives of citizens of countries across the world. The effects of the pandemic on those participating in higher education have been significant, with students at all levels of study experiencing university in a dramatically different context to that before 2020. National restrictions and lockdowns, government interventions and campus closures have all shaped the student experience, with teaching, learning and social activity taking place largely online. There have been significant challenges for PGRs and supervisors during this period, including restricted access to technology and research facilities, disruption to planned research activities and negotiating boundaries between work and domestic responsibilities. The negative impact of COVID-19 on the mental health and well-being of individuals of PGRs and early career academics has been profound (Creaton, 2021;Levine and Rathmell, 2020;Woolston, 2020). Those working in disciplines where research requires access to laboratories, specialist equipment or engaging in specific forms of fieldwork have been particularly affected. For PGRs, the uncertainty caused by the pandemic and the impact on their ability to successfully complete their research within their funding period have been particularly significant, given that even prior to the pandemic, funding pressures were found to be a factor that could contribute to poor mental health and well-being among PGRs (Mattocks and Briscoe-Palmer, 2016;Metcalfe et al., 2018).This special issue comprises nine articles that address some of the key issues in PGR's mental health and well-being. It is now widely recognised that PGRs as a population are more likely than other types of students, and more likely than the general ...
This article analyses interview data to explore how participants negotiated discourses of (hetero)sexism in relation to the controversial pop song Blurred Lines. Our previous work, based on questionnaire data, interrogated interpretations of Blurred Lines (Handforth, Paterson, Coffey-Glover & Mills 2017) and showed how participants drew on discourses of sexism in their responses. Several participants experienced significant conflict in their interpretations, and here we focus on these more complex interpretations, considering the “small stories” (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) identified in follow-up interviews with participants. Individual narratives acted as mechanisms through which participants linked Blurred Lines to wider issues such as rape culture, drawing parallels between these and their own lives. Following research in queer linguistics (King 2014; Leap 2014; Motschenbacher 2010) our use of thematic analysis, corpus linguistic tools and narrative analysis highlights the various subject positions that participants negotiated in their storytelling, and how these positions both echoed and challenged normative understandings of gender and sexuality.
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