Dr Helen Johnson

Dr Helen Johnson (née Gregory) is interested in the study of arts and creativity, and in performative social science (or arts-based research). She has studied spoken word and poetry slam communities, educational applications of youth poetry slam, and arts-interventions in dementia care. She is also interested in the construction of identity in different communities. Helen uses a range of research methods, but is particularly interested in qualitative methods such as interviewing, ethnography, thematic analysis and interpretative phenomenological analysis. In recent years, she has begun to combine her research with poetry and visual arts, using art as a means of data collection, analysis and dissemination. Helen is also a performance poet, and runs the poetry stages at Glastonbury and Larmer Tree Festivals.

Helen-Johnson

Dr Helen Johnson, Senior Lecturer

How I like to teach

Helen holds a Postgraduate Certificate of Higher Education in Teaching and Learning (passed with distinction) and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Throughout her career, she has sought to develop her teaching, learning support and assessment practice in line with the UK Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education. She is particularly interested in applying active, student-centred learning approaches, which emphasise collaborative and interactive learning experiences. Helen teaches topics across the undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum particularly in Social and Applied Sciences, with foci including qualitative and quantitative research methods, psychology of creativity and the arts, critical community psychology, cyberpsychology and the history of psychology. She also supervises student projects at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Helen is interested in supervising PhD students in arts-based research (performative social science), social scientific theories and applications around creativity and the arts, arts interventions in dementia care and the arts in education.

My research interests

I have conducted social scientific research since my undergraduate Psychology dissertation in 2000. My main area of research interest is the arts, and particularly poetry. My research tends to be qualitative, but I have also used quantitative analysis in my work. In 2009 I received my PhD (completed with no revisions) from the Department of Sociology at the University of Exeter, England. My doctoral research explored the ways in which poetry slam participants in England and the USA understand their selves, others and their worlds in the context of slam and performance poetry. Since then, I have continued to carry out research which seeks to both understand the arts better and to use the arts as a tool for data collection, analysis and dissemination. I am particularly interested in educational applications of the arts, including youth spoken word, and health/wellbeing applications, including uses of the arts in dementia. I am also interested in research around critical community psychology and the social construction of identities.

Research activity

Current research projects

  • Development of the ‘collaborative poetics’ network and method. (Collaborative poetics is a method of arts-based research, in which artists, community groups and academics from multiple disciplines collaborate on issues of social change and social justice.)  

Previous research projects

  • the development of an interactive arts installation highlighting lived experiences of invisible illnesses (with  )
  • the lived experiences of people with dementia
  • how arts-based research can combat stigma around dementia
  • digital/online media, peer mentoring and poetry education in the context of youth slam and spoken word
  • participant observation of Apples & Snakes' national youth slam/spoken word project, Shake the Dust
  • evaluation of a poetry intervention (Try to Remember) for people with dementia
  • history of youth slam and spoken word in the U.K.
  • evaluation of Apples & Snakes' national youth slam project, WordCup 2010
  • performance poets' accounts of why they perform
  • gender differences in the uses of social media (with Richard Joiner and colleagues)
  • how adult and youth poetry slam participants in the U.K. and U.S. construct narratives around slam and their identities as slam participants

Research centres and groups

Centre of Resilience for Social Justice

Social media links

Contact me

Applied Social Science
Falmer
欧美性爱片
BN1 9PH

Telephone +44 (0)1273641116
Email: H.F.Johnson@brighton.ac.uk

Biography

I am an enthusiastic, innovative scholar, with an established teaching record and a strong research portfolio in the areas of dementia, creativity and performative social science. My work focuses on the social scientific study of arts/creativity, including spoken word communities, educational applications of poetry slam and arts interventions in dementia. I typically use qualitative methods such as interviews, ethnography, thematic analysis and interpretative phenomenological analysis, and am particularly interested in applying poetry, visual and performance arts to data collection, analysis and dissemination. I have spearheaded innovative, community-based research outputs such as art exhibitions and performances. My research has capitalised on third stream applications and interactions, working with partners in schools, care homes, GP surgeries, local authorities and arts organisations and charities. I am also a performance poet, and run the poetry stages at Glastonbury and Larmer Tree Festivals.

Research output



Cobain, D. (August 2, 2014) Interview with Helen Gregory, Organiser of Glastonbury Festival's Poetry&Words Tent.

Gregory, H. (2014). I'm no different, The Psychologist, 27 (8): Centre page spread.

Gregory, H. (2013) Youth take the lead: Digital poetry and the next generation. English in Education, 47 (2): 118133.

Joiner, R., Gavin, J., Brosnan, M., Cromby, J., Gregory, H., Guiller, J., Maras, P. & Moon, A. (2013) Comparing first and second generation digital natives internet use, internet anxiety and internet identification, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16 (7): 549-552.

Gregory, H., Hayes, K., Jones, V. and Opher, S. (2012) Poetry in dementia care: Overcoming the challenges, Australian Journal of Dementia Care, 1 (4): 22-25.

Gregory, H., Hayes, K., Jones, V. and Opher, S. (2012) Poetry in dementia care: One project, four voices. Australian Journal of Dementia Care, 1 (3): 25-27.

Joiner, R., Gavin, J., Brosnan, M., Cromby, J., Gregory, H., Guiller, J., Maras, P. & Moon, A. (2012) Gender, internet experience, internet identification and internet anxiety: A ten-year follow-up. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15 (7): 370-372.

Gregory, H. (2012) Poetry performances on the page and stage: Insights from Slam. In, S. Gingell and W. Roy (Eds.) Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking Beyond: Interfaces of the Oral, Written, and Visual, pp. 77-96. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Gregory, H., Hayes, K., Jones, V. and Opher, S. (2012) Using poetry in dementia care: four voices, one journey. Journal of Dementia Care, Jan/Feb: 27-30.

Gregory, H., Hayes, K., Jones, V. and Opher, S. (2012) Issues and impacts of poetic interventions in dementia. Journal of Dementia Care, March/April: 20-23. Shake the Dust (2012) The Importance of Youth Slam: An Interview with Dr Helen Gregory.

Gregory, H. (2011) Using poetry to improve the quality of life and care for people with dementia: a qualitative analysis of the try to remember programme, Arts & Health, 3 (2): 160-172.

Gregory, H. (2009) Texts in Performance: Identity, Interaction and Influence in U.K. and U.S. Poetry Slam Discourses. [PhD Thesis]

Gregory, H. (2008) The quiet revolution of poetry slam: the sustainability of cultural capital in the light of changing artistic conventions. Ethnography and Education, 3 (1): 61-71. Gregory, H. (2008) (Re)presenting ourselves: Art, identity and status in uk poetry slam. Oral Tradition, 23 (2): 201-217.

Consultancy

Previous consultancy work includes:

Evaluation of the Young Poets Network web resources for The Poetry Society, 2012

Evaluation of Word Cup and Shake the Dust youth poetry slam events for Apples and Snakes, 2010 and 2012

PhD students

Bruno De Oliveira (supervised with Katherine Johnson and Carl Walker) Homelessness and concientization: Exploring how the use of PAR under the frame work Performative Social Sciences challenges discourses about homelessness leading the community into a process of concientization.