Dr Julie Parsons
Julie is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Plymouth. She has worked with LandWorks since the charity opened its doors to ‘trainees’ in July 2013. Inititally as programme lead for the MSc in Social Research she supervised students on placement helping the charity with their evaluation of the project. Since 2015 she has been awarded a series of externally funded research grants to work with trainees and graduates from LandWorks. The first was a Sociology of Health and Illness Foundation, Mildred Blaxter fellowship (2015-16), exploring commensality (eating together) as a tool for health, well-being, social inclusion and community [1][2]. Followed by an Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) mid-career fellowship (2016-17), working on a Photographic electronic Narrative (PeN) project with men released on temporary licence from the local prison and others serving community sentences on placement at LandWorks, which is ongoing [3].
Julie Parsons is available at jmparsons@plymouth.ac.uk
Rob Giles
The original iPoems concept was for the audio recording to be combined with personal pictures from the interviewee and their timeline to form a video. Rob produced two versions for the first production entitled ‘Red Pen’, with and without text. For his second iPoem, ‘Dreaming of Fishing’, Rob decided to focus more specifically on the poetry itself using a sequenced delivery to animate the text over a single image which helped focus the meaning further and again enhanced the voice narration.
The continuous adaption and progression of the process is set to continue with each production building on the last to further enhance and develop this series.
Rob Giles is available at rob.giles@plymouth.ac.uk
Daniela Chivers
Daniela is in her third year at the University of Plymouth, studying for a BSc (Hons) in Sociology. She has been volunteering at Landworks for the last 2 years and has been involved in creating I-poems. When Daniela is not at university, she works with children with special needs. Her dissertation focus is going to be whether children with special educational needs should go to a mainstream school or a special needs school. She is also interested in photography and has previously won the ‘Visualising Sociology Photography Competition’ (2018-19).
For more information about the people who have been at LandWorks check out the Photographic electronic-Narrative (PeN) project at https://penprojectlandworks.org/. Information about LandWorks is also available here.
References:
[1] Parsons, J.M. (2017), “Cooking with offenders to improve health and well-being”, British Food Journal, Vol. 119 No. 5, pp. 1079-1090.
[2] Parsons, J. M. (2018) ‘‘Commensality’ as a theatre for witnessing change for criminalised individuals working at a resettlement scheme’, European Journal of Probation, 10(3), pp. 182–198. doi: 10.1177/2066220318819239.
[3] Parsons, J.M. (2018) Virtual Social Media Spaces, a relational arena for bearing witness to desistance, Papers from the British Criminology Conference 2018, Vol 18