Joining Teesside University as Professor of Participatory Storytelling and Public Policy

After 9 years (110 months) of personal and professional growth at Loughborough University, School of Design and Creative Arts (former School of the Arts, English and Drama), I am delighted to start a new chapter at Teesside University, School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Law, as Professor of Participatory Storytelling and Public Policy.

Campus Heart, The Curve & The Library, Middlesbrough

From the 5th of February, I am part of the leadership team for the Institute for Collective Place Leadership (IfCPL). This newly formed research institute brings together the School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Law, Teesside University International Business School (TUIBS) and the School of Arts and Creative Industries (SACI). The institute responds to a key pillar of the university research strategy around ‘People and Place’. Academics and the PGR community work across three themes within the IfCPL: ‘Imaginative and Innovative Places’, ‘Empowered and Inclusive Places’ and ‘Sustainable and Resilient Places’. The IfCPL is built on principles of lived experience, empowering change through evidence-based solutions, and partnership and collaboration and local, regional, national and international levels. The strategic direction of TU research in this space recognises that regions are undergoing significant transition and transformation is required to alleviate ongoing social, cultural and economic inequalities while aspiring towards shared, inclusive and prosperous futures.

The IfCPL will provide academic leadership across all thematic areas, through its Director, Professor Natasha Vall and Research Director, Dr Kieran Fenby-Hulse.

Digital Storytelling with museum objects: exploring the benefits of co-creation within diverse learning communities

It is now accessible online the video-recording of my presentation at the European Open and Digital Learning Week 2023, as part of the panel on Well-being, Heritage and Higher Education Learning chaired by Prof. Antonella Poce, University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy.

You can watch it here 50′ from the start of the panel.

EODLW 2023 – Well-being, Heritage and Higher Education Learning (my talk 50′ from the start)

You can read the abstract below.

Social interaction between peers is an essential factor in the development of an inclusive practice within formal and non-formal Education, aiming at increasing individual and collective wellbeing. Starting from this premise, Digital Storytelling is presented here as a transformative educational approach, considering the key values of its original model and the flexibility of the various tools applied within this participatory practice. In particular, the use of museum objects, both in the physical and in the virtual space, is suggested as a way of prompting the storytelling process during the story-circle, while exploring personal connections with the object itself. This activity has proved to enhance creativity and collaboration in a context in which mutual learning and peer support are prioritised. Our experience suggests that the role of emotion in the digital storytelling process is central to the promotion of ‘embodiment’, a specific form of knowledge that exists in ‘the telling of stories with emotional meaning’. This extraordinarily rich meaning-making process facilitated in the various steps of the Digital Storytelling approach, that constantly interweaves the personal and the collective, finds its engine in the hyper segmentation of the conventional DS model and its many disruptions driven by co-creation.

New publication: Editorial: Towards 2030: Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education

Delighted to have published our editorial and have worked with fantastic colleagues and dear friends (Philippa Rappoport, Smithsonian Institution, US; Antonella Poce, University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy; Matthew Rabagliati, UK National Commission for UNESCO) on this very important Research Topic published by Frontiers, that addresses the fourth Sustainable Development Goal, which is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

This is the beginning of our editorial: Ambitious targets, as defined in the fourth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4) on “quality education” (WEF, 2016), are essential to stimulate innovative research around complex systems and also to extend and amplify the debate well beyond the academic community. Yet to achieve those targets inclusive language within policy and practice play a critical role (Kennett, 2021), in particular when considering communication as a tool to support democratic participation and knowledge exchange beyond institutionalized borders.

You can download and read the article via this link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2023.1328002/full

Wellbeing, Heritage and Higher Education Learning

For the European Open and Digital Learning Week organised by EDEN DLE, I was invited to deliver a talk as part of an exciting panel discussion (on Monday the 6th of November at 3pm CET) facilitated by Prof. Antonella Poce, University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy.

The panel explores how we promote wellbeing within the university context and what role could the use of technology and heritage play. The session, through the participation of seven experts from different European and non-European institutions, aims to investigate research experiences in the field of promoting and evaluating wellbeing in formal Higher Education contexts, especially through the use of heritage and technology as educational tools.

The title of my presentation is: Digital Storytelling with museum objects: exploring the benefits of co-creation within diverse learning communities.

If you want to join us, please, register via this link.

What Digital Storytelling Means to the New Generation of Researchers

Our latest Open Access publication is inspired by the panel we delivered at the International Digital Storytelling Conference in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore areas, US, in June 2023.

What Digital Storytelling Means to the New Generation of Researchers

Please, read the abstract below.

A new, hybrid way of conceiving Digital Storytelling (DS) in applied research is presented here as an essential trigger to challenge, expand, and eventually re-frame the way in which DS is currently codified. The three methodological perspectives described in this paper share a common understanding of practice-as-research. They position themselves within three distinct disciplines—illustration, animation, and the creative arts in education—but have a strong commitment to interdisciplinarity. Each of them is trying to respond to a specific cultural and personal issue (e.g., sense of identity, mental health, attainment within competitive environments, etc.) and also serves as a prompt to reflect on a potential new aspect of DS as research, linked to the how, the what, and the why of these multiple and complementary applications. The intention of this paper is not to propose one alternative way of operating, but to inspire other researchers wanting to apply this approach in their work to constantly challenge any pre-conceived form and process, while prioritizing the democratization of knowledge production and informing their research process with co-design and participatory principles. The take-away message from these three case studies is that DS will be, in fact, embraced by the new generations of researchers as a sustainable practice all the more, as its many disruptions will generate spaces for co-creation and self-representation to emerge, and will stimulate everyone involved in the research process to challenge their own way of thinking and to go beyond what was codified by others and by their own practice too.

You can read the full paper via this link: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/9/485

Please, cite as: Liguori A, Sung KJ, McLaughlin L, Stuttle J. What Digital Storytelling Means to the New Generation of Researchers. Social Sciences. 2023; 12(9):485. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12090485