Institute for Health Citizenship

1. Institute for Health Citizenship Mission statement The Institute for Health Citizenship is concerned with trans-disciplinary and innovative approaches towards a range of contemporary topics on the interface between health, wellbeing and citizenship.

2. Institute for Health Citizenship Ethos We seek to ‘trouble’ disciplinary boundaries through trans-disciplinary critique challenging the traditional research mindset that tends to dismiss alternative perspectives on health, wellbeing and citizenship. We aim to open up new discursive and visual spaces that facilitate inclusivity within issues of health citizenship. 

3. Institute for Health Citizenship Professor James Avis Director of Research and Professor of Post-Compulsory Education and Training. His research interests lie in post-compulsory education and life-long learning. He has a keen interest in the political economy of this sector and its policy contextualisation. Recent books include Issues in Post-Compulsory Education and Training, Education, Policy and Social Justice; Teaching in Lifelong Learning. Current writing addresses localism, governance and community in relation to education and the state and also explores issues surrounding workplace learning.

4. Institute for Health Citizenship Dr. Pamela Fisher Senior lecturer in Sociology. Currently working on a project with Mencap in Kirklees. Forthcoming book co-edited with Professor Valerie Bryson, The New Labour Experiment. Published widely in peer-reviewed journals, early research centres upon European sociological and political topics. PhD awarded in 2002, examined life transitions after German unification in 1990 and how these were shaped by understandings of citizenship.

5. Institute for Health Citizenship Dr. Chris Gifford Head of Criminology, Politics and Sociology. A political sociologist interested in both the theoretical and experiential dimensions of citizenship. Published on the relationship between national and post-national citizenship and the implications this raises for issues of identity and education. Preliminary research on how health professionals learn about citizenship. Recently completed project on multicultural, internationalism and diversity in the European higher education curricula for the European Commission - developed into a set of guidelines for the sector.

6. Institute for Health Citizenship Dr. Abigail Locke Principal Lecturer in Psychology A qualitative, critical social scientist, interested in issues around social and health psychology. The arena of health whereby I study communication between health professionals and patients, considering its links to policy. Social Sciences PhD in 2001 specialist in discursive psychology that deconstructs talk and text. Research publications in the social, rhetorical and performative nature of discourse, in particular how messages are framed and communicated by health professionals to expectant parents.

7. Institute for Health Citizenship Dr. Steve Swindells Reader in Creative Practice and ADA School Research Leader. PhD in 2004 on ‘The Relationship between Art and Citizenship’. Art practitioner exploring issues related to abstraction, nothingness and post-conceptualism. Interested in how artists develop interface between the work and public reception. 2009 exhibitions in Seoul, Taipei and Bangkok in 2009, exhibited widely across Europe, North America/Canada and Asia (2002 – 2008). Recent publications: Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Volume 2; ‘Things Artists do Anyway’, Studio Bibliotheque, Hong Kong (2008).

8. Institute for Health Citizenship ‘Obesity’ project rationale Health and wellbeing are now located within a policy framework that emphasises individual responsibility.  Within this discourse, health and wellbeing have been re-positioned as a ‘civic duty’. Obesity increasingly linked to stigmatisation and marginalisation from mainstream citizenship. People labelled ‘obese’ discriminated against in employment amongst other activities. Critical examination on mediation of ‘health time bomb’.

9. Institute for Health Citizenship Obesity project Urgent need to broaden the obesity debate’ from diverse disciplinary perspectives. The ‘obesity epidemic’ relationship to healthy eating and body weight in education. Critical review of 1999 the National Healthy School Standard (NHSS). Schools and colleges sites for the promotion of ‘successful’ citizenship. Healthy Schools Project currently extended to Colleges of Further Education. Work with stakeholder New College Huddersfield - forerunner in this initiative.

10. Institute for Health Citizenship Obesity project The virtuous citizen is projected to strive towards good health and the maintenance of a healthy body weight. The dominant policy message is reflected in and endorsed by media representations relating to body weight, image and, in response to the moral panic relating to an ‘epidemic’ of obesity.

11. Institute for Health Citizenship Obesity project Aims Research understandings of healthy eating, body weight and obesity from diverse disciplinary perspectives; including sociological, psychological, semiotic, visual-culture, nutritional and educational; Explore the extent to which teacher trainees subscribe to dominant health messages and how they perceive their role as educators in relation to these;

12. Institute for Health Citizenship Obesity project Aims Investigate whether trainee teachers represent their personal lifestyle and eating practices in response to dominant health messages; Draw together debates from the sociology of health and illness, the social psychology of health, semiotic analysis and visual culture, nursing and medicine, nutrition and education.

13. Institute for Health Citizenship Methods Media analysis of conceptualisations of obesity. Second stage data collection, visual images and photovoice facilitate fieldwork interviews with trainee teachers in Colleges of Further Education. Focus groups to investigate common perceptions and discourses around obesity.

14. Institute for Health Citizenship Outputs Two year project will produce a number of research outputs; peer-reviewed journal articles, research papers, seminar programmes, end of project conference, project website, photography exhibition and a billboard exhibition.

15. Institute for Health Citizenship Selected Future projects Euthanasia, right to die discourses Doing ‘being positive’ in ill-health Designer babies, genetic modifications

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