Professional Development
I was really pleased to present the findings from the project for teachers at Ark Victoria Academy in Small Heath last month as well as talking about the power of community-engaged outreach at St George’s Church Edgbaston. In both places, I spoke about the power of personal narrative in talking about one’s faith both to…
Narrative Inquiry Article
I am very pleased to say that the first article from the project has now been published in Narrative Inquiry. This is an academic journal, so the article is written in very academic language, but if you’re interested in seeing what it’s about, please look here: https://benjamins.com/catalog/ni.22045.pih I’m very happy to pass on a copy…
Super-diversity and the future
Wednesday marked the final day of my current funding for the Superdivercity Project, as a Leadership Fellowship with the AHRC. I’m incredibly thankful for the time I’ve had to work on the project over the last year and half. I’ve gathered some great insights about the language and religion in this city and how people…
Talking about beliefs
A key part of this project has been finding a way to communicate the findings in a simple and clear way. I’m really happy to everyone who gave feedback about the findings that led to this infographic. I’m really excited to finally be able to share this and would like to make it available to…
Presenting the project
I will be speaking to the Aston Stylistics Research Group at the beginning of next month (1 Dec, Thursday, at 16:00 UCT), as the project comes to a close. The talk will be online, so all are welcome! The talk is called ‘In a bit of a muddle’: Positioning and storylines in talk about religious…
Writing up
The project has begun to move on to its next phase, where I need to start to write up my findings in several different outputs. The plan for is to write several articles based on the project one focused on some theory about narrative I’ve been developing from my data, an article about the construction…
Reflections on interviews
As I sat in a conference a couple of weeks ago, reflecting on the time I’ve spent over the last year gathering data, I was suddenly filled with a strange panicked thought: why did I interview my participants? The initial answer is obvious: because that’s what you do when you’re trying to find things out…
Applied Stylistics Symposium
Looking forward to presenting the project in-person at the Applied Stylistics Symposium in Aston this Friday! The slides for the presentation are here: http://bit.ly/AstonPres
Are you welcome?
The Mormon church in Harborne, which opened up as a vaccination centre last year, has a sign on the front that says ‘Vistors Welcome’. I have never been to a Mormon church before and have been thinking about attending a service there if I have a free Sunday morning one day. I’ve wondered though if…
The power to compel change
This last week, I was away at Citizens UK’s six-day residential leadership course, hosted this year by The Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham. The course is accredited by my very own Newman University with an award of a Certificate in Community Leadership. I did Citizens’ three-day training online last year and was really eager to spend…
Language and Religion in the Superdiverse City 