Research
Literary Reading
Uses and value of literature beyond the academy;
Reading aloud and reading processes;
Medical Humanities;
Psychology of reading;
Psychodynamics of reading groups;
Children and reading (including issues of attachment);
Reading and health;
Literature in prisons, literature and depression,
Literature and dementia;
Cultural value, forms of assessment and evaluation.
Victorian Literature
Nineteenth-century realism;
Victorian novel;
Victorian women's fiction (George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant);
Victorian poetry (especially Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Victorian sonnet);
Creative process (via original manuscript material);
Free indirect discourse.
Research grants
National partnership to tackle health inequalities in coastal communities
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
February 2024 - January 2027
AHRC IAA 22-25
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
April 2022 - January 2026
Seeing Arts Health Research Enacted (SHARED): Understanding what works for whom in arts-based approaches for mental health and wellbeing globally (SHARED)
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
August 2022 - July 2023
COVID-19 CARE: Culture and the Arts, from Restriction to Enhancement: Protecting Mental Health in the Liverpool City Region
UK RESEARCH AND INNOVATION
August 2020 - January 2022
Co-creating online literary resources to build a national future for reader volunteering and a real-world legacy of the Cultural Value Project.
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
June 2017 - May 2018
A practice-infromed study of the theoretical bases for bibliotherapy in the English literary tradition (Elizabethan or Victoria Periods)
MERSEY CARE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST (UK)
October 2009 - September 2013
A Study of a Literature Based Intervention with Women in Prison
NATIONAL PERSONALITY DISORDER PROGRAM (UK)
April 2011 - March 2014
Reading as Catalyst for Change.
MERSEY CARE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST (UK)
April 2015 - October 2019
How to promote children's language development using family-based shared book reading.
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
April 2015 - August 2018
Assessing the intrinsic value, and health and well-being benefits, for individual and community, of The Reader Organisation's Volunteer Reader Scheme.
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
September 2013 - September 2014
MerseyBeat- Best Evidence, Application and Translation of Research. An investigation into the therapeutic benefits of reading in relation to depression and well-being.
LIVERPOOL PRIMARY CARE TRUST (UK)
January 2009 - June 2011
Reading for Pleasure and Adult Literacy.
MARS UK LIMITED (UK)
December 2014 - December 2018
Permission to play: taking play seriously; making sport playful
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
February 2012 - October 2012
Participatory Arts for Well-Being: Past and Present Practices
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
January 2011 - December 2011
Reading and Chronic Pain.
BRITISH ACADEMY (UK)
May 2014 - June 2015
The Reader Organisation’s Whole Population Project in Lambeth and Southwark.
GUY'S AND ST THOMAS' CHARITY (UK)
November 2013 - December 2017
Research collaborations
Haesun Moon, Arlinda Ruco
Relational and Appreciative Practices in Healthcare
TAOS Institute, US
Relational and Appreciative Practices in Healthcare (Taos Institute, US)
Dr Mette Steenberg
Reading and Mental Health
Interacting Minds Centre, University of Aarhus
Co-leads of research coalition for literary reading and wellbeing, IGEL (International Society for Empirical Aesthetics)
Professor Rhiannon Corcoran
Reading and Mental Health
Interdisciplinary (mixed methods) study of the benefits of shared reading for adult mental health and the mechanisms/processes which mediate benefit.
Dr Rachael Levy
ESRC Reading with Children and Families
University of Sheffield
Related work packages on the benefits of a shared reading for pleasure intervention in children aged 0-5.
Dr Jane Milling
The University of Exeter
AHRC funded research network on participatory arts for well-being (with University of Glamorgan).
Professor Hamish Fyfe
University of Glamorgan
AHRC funded research network on participatiry arts for well-being.
Professor Peter Kinderman
Benefits of reading for pleasure for looked after children.
Dr David Fearnley
Merseycare NHS Trust
Co-supervisor of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award laying clinical/literary foundations for Bibliotherapy.
Professor Philip Davis
Selection of Elizabeth Barrett Brownng's poetry for revised Oxford Authors series (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2013).
Dr Jude Robinson
MerseyBEAT-funded project (£45,000) on benefits of reading in relaton to depression. Dept of Health/Home Office funded project (£50,000) on benefits ofreading for female prisoners with personaility disorder.
Professor Chris Dowrick
MerseyBEAT - funded project (£45,000) on benefits of reading in relation to depression.