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Paid Undergraduate Research Assistant Position

Emma Parfitt — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 15:24:00 +0000

Job title: Undergraduate research assistant

Deadline: 12 noon, 29^th February

This might be the opportunity for you

Are you an undergraduate first year student in social sciences or humanities?

Would you like research experience on your CV?

Do you need paid work experience?

Overview of the project

The Belgrade Theatre’s ‘bearing witness to marginalised groups’ programme aimed to work with young people from diverse backgrounds. Each group works closely with a trained dramaturg (a crafter of stories for the stage), sharing and shaping experiences into dramatic form. This project offered young people an opportunity to reflect, share, rethink, and transform their stories. Our project is a retrospective study with previous participants of the ‘bearing witness’ programme from 5 to 10 years later.

Vacancy Type/Job category

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Departments

Social Sciences – Humanities

Salary

£1070.76 (plus holiday pay of £129.24)

Extra for conducting approximately 15 interviews, £360 (which works out at £24 per two hour interview)

Location

University of Warwick and local Coventry area

Benefits

Paid research experience

Reference provided (subject to performance)

Qualifications

Open to current first year students, at Warwick University, from social sciences or humanities.

No previous work experience or set qualifications required.

Enthusiasm and reliability a must.

Applicants should be willing to learn and able to work with others.

I am looking for two first year undergraduates who are interested in the opportunity of a paid research position. Preferably available through the summer, but will consider term time only

The role involves research-led learning. You will be led through the complete research process including how to conduct qualitative interviews, transcribe interview recordings, analyse qualitative data with Nvivo, presentation and writing skills.

You will be in charge of interviewing and filming, scheduling interviews, recording participants, etc. And get a chance to write a paper and present a case study.

Expect interviews to be weekends and evenings around participant’s schedules.

Time commitment

Interviews are anticipated to commence from the 1^st July – 1^st October 2016, involving about 10 hours of transcription a week.

There will be training sessions on interviews, transcription, Nvivo software, presentation and writing skills lasting approximately 1-2 hours.

Some assessment will be conducted through the process which will be explained in the interview, this will require keeping a journal of your experiences throughout the project. Data analysis will begin in term 1 (academic year 2016-2017, with an estimated 2 hours a week from November to December 2016).

If interested please email: e.l.parfitt@warwick.ac.uk with a paragraph explaining why you are interested in the post, giving some information about yourself, and what subject you are studying at Warwick.

This post has been funded by the IATL Strategic staff fund

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The Culture of Competition in Modern liberal Societies (25th February)

Emma Parfitt — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 10:45:00 +0000

Professor Johnathan Hearn came to speak, at the University of Warwick, about power and the role of competition in society.

‘Competition is part of the deep structure of how society is organised,’ he said. ‘I am not a supporter of competition. I used to be a musician and thought I would escape the constant competition over gigs by working in the ivory tower of academia. Of course competition kept chasing after me!’

Hearn discussed competition as rituals that may or may not succeed. Competition between belief-making institutions may be responsible, in part, for the dissemination of certain ideologies in society. Of course because my research interest is stories I probably ignored his real message and began to make connects of stories-competition.

isn’t a new concept. It is an historical point of view, as Winston Churchill said ‘History is written by the victors.’ Whether through news stories, education, or reality TV like I’m a Celebrity Get me out of Here! These forms of story as society’s narratives may be feeding back to anyone watching or listening that competition is a “natural” part of society.

Hearn points out, the word competitive relating to the characteristic of a person didn’t exist until the mid-18^th century (I hope I remembered accurately). Is it then a socially influenced phenomenon?

Say narratives are competing all the time… in this way they might contribute to social stability or social change. Certain ideologies would be reinforced as “the norm” and others frowned upon, in different ways in different societies. I doubt that society is structured around competition on its own, and this isn’t what Hearn was trying to say. He acknowledged the difficulties of separating competition from other factors that contribute to the complexity of our social world. And anti-competitive individuals also have to be considered, although as beings there is an element of competing for resources that we cannot escape. Especially in the academic world when it comes to funding. Should we be funding the best competitors who may hold very conventional and therefore definable ideas, or should we fund the ideas. Now there’s a thought.

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Interview with Jack Zipes

Emma Parfitt — Sun, 15 Dec 2013 13:41:00 +0000

This month I went to Cambridge to talk to Professor Jack Zipes about my PhD in storytelling and socialization. Here is a podcast about my visit. it begins with an introduction of my work followed by a summary from Professor Zipes of his unusual career path including how he believes storytelling can benefit young people: Click for Podcast

After outlining the summer school widening participation project me and Paul Whitehouse ran at Warwick University this year and our hopes to form a permanent programme in schools Professor Zipes invited me to go to Minneapolis and observe the Neighbourhood Bridges Program that he co-founded Peter Brosius, artistic director of the Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis in 1997. The Neighbourhood Bridges literacy program runs from September to May each year. There are about 15 to 20 sessions per every week in different schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul in the USA.

For more information please follow this link: Neighbourhood Bridges Project.

I am currently seeking a grant to allow me to take up this fabulous opportunity.

I have also been invited to present a roundtable at the BSA conference this year but was unable to attend due to a family wedding. However I will be speaking at Leicester University’s conference on Education, Emotions and the Future on the 22nd of January 2014.

Thus far I have been able to continue in my PhD and related projects due to the generosity of the PREP fund at Warwick University, Warwick’s English Department, and the Adam Smith Institute.

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Emma Parfitt — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 11:30:00 +0000

‘life should be until you die’

Stated Felicity (Parfitt 2013a line. 87).

[Photo by Null Value at Flickr.com]

From an initial analysis of my focus groups young people seem to be aware of conformist and nonconformist elements in the stories—such as the compulsion to accept social “norms” and values—along with other potentially influential narratives such as media, film, television, video games, books, the internet, and education. I found it interesting that in the all-girls school Group One related the content of the stories to crime and how to treat other people. In week one whilst talking about the story MacCodram (MacIntyre 2012) the group’s conversation revolved around crime before they even reached my focus group question about conformist and nonconformist elements that they recognised in the story (lines. 82-91),

Mary I know this is getting off the subject a bit but if you murder someone you get ten years

RES If you murder someone you get a life sentence

Felicity A life sentence is about twenty-five years

Paris It’s not good enough

Felicity A life should be until you die

Paris You can get bailed out before then because if you’re good you’re allowed

Felicity If your family have enough money

Paris Yeah but and you’re let out if you’re good

Mary You shouldn’t do it though, just do your time

Two of girls in this group, Mary and Felicity, shared in their final interviews that they want to join the police force (Parfitt 2013c). Mary’s mum is a teacher and her step-dad works in the army perhaps explaining her strong stance on crime. Felicity’s mum works in school administration. What her father does is unknown but she does say that ‘I love CSI,’ and is knowledgeable about things happening the news (Parfitt 2013a line. 132). So TV and media may be influential on her desire to join the police force (though Felicity’s first choice is to be a vet). A little while later the group’s conversation returned to crime as Felicity mentioned up the case of a homeless man that was on the news, Felicity, Heidi and Mary explain what happened to Paris (Parfitt 2013a lines. 158-176),

Paris When? Where?

Mary A homeless man got beat up by three teenagers

Heidi They got dared

Mary A twelve year old, a thirteen year old and a seventeen year old

Paris They got dared?

Heidi They got dared to kill a homeless man

Mary They were dared to kill this man. They beat him up and then

Felicity Dared, saying I dare you to go kill that man

Mary No, they beat him up first, then they walked away, and their friend makes like, I bet you couldn’t finish him off and they were like, yeah, and then they battered him to death. The twelve year old didn’t do anything. He stood and watched. But he still got something like five years, three years for it

Felicity He got six years. Yeah, my teacher told me this, the homeless man, eye socket was missing, that’s how much damage they gave to him

Paris You what?

Mary His eye socket was missing, that’s how badly they

Felicity The seventeen year old who did most of the work, he only got ten years

Mary He should have got like twenty-five, he should have got murder

Felicity He should have got life

Note how Mary and Felicity relate all the facts of the case; it makes sense that they would take an interest when considering police work. Read the news story here: BBC News. Mary in particular as the police force is her first choice narrates what happened in order. Justice is very important to the group in a conservative way, they share a ‘do your time’ attitude that Mary expressed earlier (line. 91).

[Photo by Brim216974 on flickr.com]

The way people treat other people is also very important to this group, as Mary summaries in week two conformative to her means things that are ‘Illegal’ or ‘common decency rules’ (Parfitt 2013b line. 128). An example would be the way the husband treated the wife in Moon Bear. They see this as nonconformative to the way a woman expects to be treated by her husband (lines. 130-141),

Mary I reckon the nonconformative was probably the way the husband treated the wife, it wasn’t very nice. I wouldn’t have put up with that

Felicity I’d be like, get out my house now

Mary Well he wasn’t in it in the first place

Felicity Get out my forest

Paris Get out my life

Heidi What about conformative though?

Mary I guess you could say that the wife was conformative because she

Heidi Cared for him

Mary Cared for, yeah

Heidi She tried everything that she could

Felicity To get him back into the house

In relation to conformity the group also discusses appearances.

‘You’re not the same person than you are with nothing on’

Says Heidi (Parfitt 2013a line. 254). The way they describe makeup in relation to themselves, the way they describe others, a lot of it is visual. Make-up is seen as a surface act, a mask ‘When you’ve got your makeup off you tend to look at yourself in the mirror and you don’t usually see the same person that you do with makeup, when you’ve always got a disguise on’ (Heidi 250-253).

Heidi wears a bit of make-up but doesn’t ‘plaster my face in it’ (257), Felicity wears it ‘sometimes’ (260), while Mary says ‘I only put mascara on but I’m not wearing any today’ (266). The most obvious makeup wearer is Paris who has thick mascaraed lashes and smoky eyes. She regards this make-up as being essential to who she is and feels that her eyes look ‘horrible’ when ‘I’ve got no makeup on’ (267-268).

While some of the group, like Paris, view make-up as part of their self-expression and part of their day-to-day physical identity, at the same time the students also criticise other women’s sense of identity in today’s society in terms of make-up. Mary says, ‘I turned on the telly and Single Date was on and there was this girl and she had the biggest eyebrows you’d ever seen in your entire life and I took a picture, I’m going to show you now [gets out her mobile]. Like slugs on her face.’ Felicity responds, ‘You know the Liverpool, Essex or whatever, they have proper weird eyebrows’ (220-223).

When Felicity commented ‘they think it looks good but it’s not it looks really ugly,’ I asked the group, ‘Why would they think it looks good?’ Heidi said, ‘Usually you’d tend to get people, I mean I’m not trying to sound harsh or anything but, people who end up being like that do get attention from the lads and think they’re beautiful and then they keep on doing it all the time’ (238-240). Showing that in terms of social identity appearances do matter even if on a deeper level ‘whatever’s on the outside you don’t usually see on the inside’ (Heidi, 256). This group don’t seem to feel pressure to conform to the limited media images of female beauty at this stage though understand in terms of attractiveness that they will be judged by external appearances, by young men for example. And when referring to such things they are citing TV programmes like The Only Way is Essex and Single Date with a critical eye. In this way storytelling appears to be triggering conversations about what it is currently like to be a young person for these individuals.

Important themes in terms of social identity for Group one in the all-girls school were crime and appearances. Young people were aware of conformist and nonconformist elements, discussing them in the group before the focus group question was raised.

This month I am also writing a paper for The Warwick Research Exchange Journal about how the storytelling space in combination with social interaction triggers sharing conversations. I also have a meeting to discuss some of these ideas with Jack Zipes in Cambridge.

References

MACINTYRE, M. 2012. MacCodram and His Seal Wife. Video Bank. Education Scotland. http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/video/m/video_tcm4572221.asp

PARFITT, E. 2013a. All-girls School Transcript 1, 19 April 2013

PARFITT, E. 2013b. All-girls School Transcript 2, 26 April 2013

PARFITT, E. 2013c. Final Interviews, 22 May 2013

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Transformations Summer School

Emma Parfitt — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 10:46:00 +0000

The transformations summer school hosted by Warwick University, Milburn House, and planned by Paul Whitehouse and myself took place July 2013. This was a free, two-day non-residential drama and storytelling event supported by the widening participation team in the English Department, with an additional £1000 funding from PREP (Postgraduate Researcher Enterprise Programme) raised by myself.

Twenty-four pupils attended from the following schools:

Tile Hill Wood School (Coventry)
George Elliot School (Nuneton)
Stoke Park (Coventry)
Myton School (Warwick)
President Kennedy School (Coventry)
Bluecoat C of E School (Coventry)
Slough Grammar School (Slough)

We’ve had some great parent feedback about the two day event which was designed to support current year nine and ten school pupils with interests in English Literature, Drama or Theatre to consider a future in Higher Education (HE).

‘Thank you to you and the whole team for putting on such a great course. The performances were all so witty, original and well performed. It was hard to believe most of the children probably didn’t know each other before as their interactions were so fluid.

My son, said he needed to reconsider whether he was an introvert after all, as he felt himself to be an extrovert when with people ‘like him’. He spends most of his days avoiding speaking to anyone (at school) because he does not trust their motives and thinks they will have nothing in common. For him to feel he was with like-minded people, if only for two days, has cast a ray of sunshine over my hopes for his future.

I look forward to his next Transformations experience.’

Workshops included

Drama and theatre workshops over the two days, including ice-breakers, communication skills, use of body movement – by Rachel King and Ollie Turner

Rethinking Little Red Riding Hood, transforming and creating subverted pieces of writing using different versions of Little Red Riding Hood as inspiration – by Kate Edwards

Storytelling workshops including the history of folk and fairy tales – by Storyteller Colin King

A big thanks to everyone involved x

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Storytelling Event and Webinar

Emma Parfitt — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:46:00 +0000

Story telling

Friday was Christmas Sparkle my storytelling event for Warwick postgrads with Colin King.

As we sat there will mulled wine and mince pies Colin amused us with amusing, spooky and local stories. Originally from Ireland Colin went from teacher to storyteller. He also works with schools to make subjects interesting for their students.

Feedback:

“The storyteller was very good and I really liked the ancient folktales about Warwickshire and Ireland. Thanks for organising the event!”

“It was very enjoyable.”

Webinar

Also took part in a seminar via a webcam between Warwick University and Monash University in Australia. This was organised by Celia Bennett Bernstein and Josette (from Warwick), Carlos and Nicholas (from Monash).

Celia is doing work on dystonia (uncontrollable and sometimes painful muscle spasms caused by incorrect signals from the brain). Please see TheDystonia Society for more information.

Discussions were around Foucault’s ideas of power and sense of self. Specifically how medicine companies have the power to set social expectations about what is normal about our sense of self, emotions and states of mind. Thereby fitting people into categories which impact on mental health.

Some of the points I found interesting were about the way illness acts as a biographical interuption, it’s not seen as normal. Yet what is normal anyway? This is a generalisation determined by society, and the dominant powers in that society such as health care and drug companies. Organisations like the NHS produce materials such as leaflets, posters, and TV advertisements and therefore have great influence on how health is percieved. Are drug companies acting in an oppressive way in order to make money? Regardless, the way knowledge is created and then shared is important in understanding how we can change public perceptions to empower people. So what changes do we want to see?

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Settling in as a mature student

Emma Parfitt — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 14:14:00 +0000

Settling in

Settling into Warwick University has been tough with no access to the library for one month. I’ve now officially got access to everything at Warwick. I moved here from Falmouth, Exeter University, with my supervisor Sarah Moss. And there are some great training courses I can go on in the Comparative literature and Sociology departments. On qualitative and quantitative methods. At present I’m focused on applying to funding through Warwick and the Chancellor’s Fund, though it is highly competitive I hope I’ll be able to demonstrate all the hard work I’ve put in this year. There isn’t much parttime work available unfortunately. But looking for something linked to my research such as in a school or department at the university. [update, I didn’t get any grants! For the PhD, but won an IATL fellowship following my PhD, after working three parttime jobs on campus to fund the PhD, one of which was as a resident tutor living in dorms with student for mental health care].

Youngminds

I had a great meeting with Marcia Harvey, a regional participation manager at Youngminds on Friday. She is doing some amazing work with groups in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and the surrounding areas. I’m hoping that there may be potential to work together on some common goals in the future. The first step was to write an article on mental health and storytelling for their website.

Where is Emma now?

I’m writing. Returned to my first passion, and to fund that while writing books inspired by my PhD experiences and learning, I am offering proofreading.

You can see my books here.

A quote from A Friendship of Thistles: a heart-warming tale of friendship and Scotland.

‘Hector!’ Heather flings her sleeves wide open – the Scottish-wide ban on household visits be damned – a piece of her heart has returned to her. Small flecks of rain speckle Hector’s glasses and raincoat, though not enough to dampen her woollen dress. ‘Where’s Fran?’

Hector’s shoulders stiffen. ‘Fran threw me out.’

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