Lucy Cathcart Frödén

Working Title of PhD: ‘A language we all understand’? A practice-led exploration of the role of musical communication in re/integration of people who have migrated and people who have offended

Year commenced PhD study: 2017

Institution/Organisation: University of Glasgow

Funding Source: College of Social Science, University of Glasgow

Full or part-time: Full-time

PhD Supervisors: Prof Fergus McNeill, Prof Alison Phipps, Dr Jo Collinson-Scott, Ms Alison Urie

Synopsis of PhD:
‘A language we all understand?’ is an interdisciplinary doctoral project drawing on criminology, migration studies, applied linguistic and communication studies, and popular musicology. It is situated within the 3-year ESRC/AHRC-funded project ‘Distant Voices’, a practice-based collaborative action research project that aims to explore and practice re/integration after punishment through creative collaboration. This PhD adds a new strand to the Distant Voices project, seeking to explore the integration of migrants and asylum seekers through a similar lens. Kirkwood and McNeill (2016) note many similarities between the types of stigma and marginalisation faced by migrants and people with convictions.

This PhD takes a participatory and practice-based approach and the research will involve creative music workshops with groups of people who have lived experience of imprisonment and/or migration, working in partnership with various community organisations. The process of collaborative songwriting is seen here as a form of translation, and as such the work finds part of its theoretical underpinning in translation theory. In addition to a thesis, the final PhD submission will include recordings of songs created as part of the research process. A podcast called ‘Our Chance of Becoming Human’ documents some of the learning of the PhD as it progresses.

Keywords (for web searches, e.g. organised crime, violence etc): social integration through the arts, migration, translation theory