Research
The Narrative-Cognitive Spectrum
My psycho-literary research interests are varied and interrelated. I read into textual analysis upon the meeting of mind/body narratives, spanning literature of the long nineteenth century (mainly focused on psycho-aesthetics of East-West art encounters, literature, and history), philosophy of mind, philosophy of science (particularly the cognitive domain), and continental philosophy in relation to historical multimodalities, in addition to twentieth-century verse narratives and contemporary narratology.
A major focus of my psycho-literary research is pain, its literary history, theories, and wider impact on other fields. I have previously delivered in research related to the interface between communicative subjectivities and analytical objectivities, reading aesthetics of pain in relation to cognitive science. As such, my literary work is unique in the sense that it falls neither within the corpus followed by traditionalist literary critics nor that endorsed by contemporary radicals.
Auto/Biographical Narratology of Otherness
Looking for structural examples in auto/biographical narratives is my primary focus in the study of otherness, self-, and other-construction. To understand how cases of implicit bias, for instance, inform the structural content and/or transform textual dynamics of content in any work of art is among my major multidisciplinary research interests. To decipher meanings (altered by or reconstructed by way of implicit/explicit bias cues) requires certain methodological reading of narratives for which I relay literary analysis to neurobiological mechanisms surrounding learning, motivation, meaning-making, language, and decision-making. This means in-depth engagement with psychology of aesthetics, learning and teaching methodologies, exploring the diversity of aesthetic corpus in research when we think of historical othering processes.
Research collaborations
Primary and Secondary Care Professionals, NHS, Healthcare Management Bodies
Primary Care Narratives (2016-2021)
I was involved in a multi-speciality project, addressing primary care topics on patient and community care. I have collaborated with a diverse group of healthcare professionals, NHS professionals, Mental Health colleagues, secondary care consultants, and managerial as well as accounting & practice management experts and trainers. This project is in publication queue and will be presented as a co-edited volume in addition to several journal papers in due course (2021-2025).
Community Dance Groups
Oriental Dance & Variations (2019)
In 2019, I started a project on the significance of movement terminology and body-mind narratives. This project involved professional dance teachers, psychologists, and community dancers from around the globe who are practically engaged in the exercise of movement terminology. The project will see a collaborative narratology-based publication in due course as part of pre-contracted psycho-literary perspectives in multimodal contexts (2013 onwards).
Professor Josie Billington
Dementia-friendly book groups at the Care Home: Can quality of life be improved? (2019-2020)
We aimed to help people living with Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia to enjoy reading and sharing books. And we want to provide a meaningful social activity – a dementia-friendly book group - to help improve quality of life and sense of well-being at the care home.
School of Psychology & Pain Research Institute
Pain, a Psycho-Aesthetic Discourse from Renaissance Minds to Contemporary Narratives (2013-2018)
I have worked closely with colleagues from the School of Literature and Psychology, mainly on topics surrounding pain for this project (2015-18). We held several conferences and seminars discussing the topic and this culminated in a series of publications and projects.