I have been doing research in some capacity for the past 20 years. Often the research that I am involved with is a commissioned project (but not always, in the case of autoethnography, I/we study an issue by using our/my own life experiences… more on that later) and the research is often a collaborations of one type or another
Due to the type of issues we have been researching many of these projects are ongoing – for example, how can you stop trying to understand and advocate for those in our communities who experience trauma, mental distress, or those whose lives are stigmatised. To a certain extent, we are always learning new things from the people in our research and trying to make these findings as widely accessible as possible.
To this end below you will find a selection of these projects, and particularly those projects which have been collaborations with my co-researcher/writer/performer Kitrina Douglas.
Kitrina and I have been researching collaboratively since our studies at the University of Bristol. In 2003 we conducted our first study together among a group of men who attended a mental health day centre. Kitrina taught them to play golf and we looked at the benefits. We later were commissioned by Bristol City Council and AWMHT to evaluate the BALP. This all began with my doctoral studies which looked at exercise and physical activity in a mental health context. “The Long Run” a research based film, originates from my doctoral research, and tells the story of one participant who got back into running after becoming unwell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-fprKKUGKo&t=21s
We now see songwriting, storytelling, filmmaking and live performance as pivotal to understanding and communicating research more effectively. If you would like to gain a flavour for the diversity of these projects we have been involved with please check you our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkWCTy8bNOY6JlvX_yg-Uig). Within academia we have published our work as journal articles, books and book chapters as well as performing and presenting at conferences around the world.
Recent projects
Across the Tamar
Commissioned by the Womens Sport & Fitness Foundations
Under One Roof
Commissioned by the Addiction Recovery Agency
High Performance Sport
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Facilitating Conversations…..about sexual topics in education
This was a collaborative projects with Kate, Tamara, Jon and
In November 2016, we began working on a collaborative interdisciplinary project with the acronym F-COSTE—Facilitating Conversations on Sexual Topics in Education. The purpose of the project was to undertake fieldwork to explore, with young people, teachers, pastoral staff, and school decision makers, barriers to communication on sex- ual topics and the potential for creative methods to facilitate sex and relationships education. A central aspect of our work, therefore, is to learn about young people’s experi- ences of bullying, discrimination, and harassment as a result of sex, sexuality, and/or gender. Another aspect is our use of creative (artistic and/or technological) ways of sharing what we learn in ways that young people, teachers, and youth workers find accessible, engaging, and informative. In short, we are motivated to create “products” or “outputs” from our research which our stakeholders find useable and will positively impact young people’s development. To date, we have produced films which combine storytelling, moving image, and music (Douglas et al., in press; Douglas & Carless, 2017a, 2017b)
Carless, D., Douglas, K., Milnes, K., &, Turner-Moore, T. (2919). Everyone knows me as the weird kid; Being bisexual, genderfluid, and fifteen. Qualitative Inquiryhttps://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419846525 | First Published May 8, 2019
Douglas, K., Carless, D., Milnes, K., Turner-Moore, T., Tan, J. & Laredo, E. (2019). Autoethnographies and new technologies of representation: An example from facilitating conversations on sexual topics in education, Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 25(6) 535–538