Lunchtime seminar: Exploring multilingual voice-hearers' experiences
Following a piece on our Impact in Qualitative Research blog, QUAHRC research assistant Rachel Rowan Olive will be giving a seminar with our sister team at UCL, the Qualitative Health Research Network:
Voice-hearing and voice-hearers have been subject to decades of research in psychology and psychiatry; meanwhile, the study of multilingualism has been increasingly recognised in linguistics as vital to understanding how we process and store language. But cross-fertilisation between these areas has been extremely limited. Qualitative research exploring the complexities of individual experiences has been particularly overlooked. In this seminar, Rachel Rowan Olive will discuss research interviews with ten multilingual voice-hearers conducted as part of her MA in Applied Linguistics and Communication at Birkbeck. As well as presenting findings and the questions they raise for future research, she will discuss the complex power dynamics and boundaries of personal lived experience in research work; and questions of impact and ownership of research results.
Speaker biography
Rachel Rowan Olive is a survivor researcher, LISS Doctoral Training Partnership student and research assistant with KCL’s Qualitative Applied Health Research Centre, as well an associate member of the Service User Research Enterprise. She has an MA in Applied Linguistics and Communication. Her research and teaching interests span mental health and neurodiversity but typically share a focus on harm, ethics, and power in health services and health research; and survivor / lived experience communities, solidarity, and politics. Rachel is also a trustee for lived-experience-led mental health organisation the National Survivor User Network and makes art and zines. She will feature in the forthcoming Wellcome Collection exhibition Zines forever! DIY publications and disability justice from March.