My project aims to examine how former coal and steel mining areas in South Wales and Yorkshire are represented in literature, film and other media and how these representations affect communities. The genre of the industrial novel has contributed to an image which can be perceived as one-sided, and in certain, circumstances, stigmatising. Academic and media reports of South Wales and Yorkshire can also present a negative perspective. This study will examine how literary and film projects and other meaning-making structures could counter these representations; and also how places like the South Wales’ valleys and South Yorkshire can become storied differently. The approach will be conceptualised through the suggestion that literacy practices are not independent of social context but are situated in an ideological framework in which reading and writing are intertwined with cultural and power structures. This project is linked to the WISERD Civil Society research centre and will contribute to two projects in the AHRC’s Connected Communities Programme: Representing communities: developing the creative power of people to improve health and well-being and Imagine: connecting communities through research.

Recent Publications

Norms and Values in Defining a Sense of Place in the University of Wales Trinity Saint David magazine The Student Researcher, 2 (2), pp. 49-58, May 2013