Dr. Elizabeth Hoult secures funding for research on connected communities
Dr Liz Hoult is part of a consortium which has just won a £2.4m combined ESRC/AHRC 'Connected Communities' bid. The five year Imagine project, which is led by Professor Graham Crow at the University of Edinburgh, will bring together researchers and community partners to engage in a series of enquiries into the ways in which disadvantaged communities imagine better futures in a harsh economic context.
Dr Liz Hoult is part of a consortium which has just won a £2.4m combined ESRC/AHRC 'Connected Communities' bid. The five year Imagine project, which is led by Professor Graham Crow at the University of Edinburgh, will bring together researchers and community partners to engage in a series of enquiries into the ways in which disadvantaged communities imagine better futures in a harsh economic context.
The project is underpinned by four main questions:
1) What are the ways of thinking about, researching and promoting connected communities which can accommodate social and economic differences and diverse opinions?
2) What does the history of civic engagement tell us about how and why the social, historical, cultural and democratic context matters to community-building?
3) What role can imagining better futures play in capturing and sustaining enthusiasm for change?
4) Is the community being transformed by developments in social research methodology, particularly the development of collaborative methods?
In her part of the project (worth £47,000), Liz will investigate how teenage girls develop resilient intellectual and creative identities in post-industrial, 'masculine' environments in ex-steel industry towns. Linking with colleagues at the University of Sheffield, the research will be based in Rotherham and Sheppey. The project will pursue the methodological opportunities presented by occupying an interdisciplinary space between Sociology and the Arts and Humanities. It will draw on Liz's previous development of Cixous’ notion of l'écriture féminine as a theoretical framework and the use of literary texts to develop an investigative framework and will explore the role that autobiographical writing plays in the development of community histories. The project will begin in January 2014, with planning meetings taking place in 2013.