CONGRATULATIONS to alum Catherine Cartwright who has successfully defended her PhD at viva!

“I’m an artist, primarily using printmaking, drawing and collage, sometimes working with animation and artists’ books.”

Catherine‘s PhD project has explored trauma-informed community art practices and contributed to new knowledge and literature in this field. Through working with a sensitivity to trauma-informed research methods, Catherine offered perspectives on how to create ethical research environments that support wellbeing and safety for both researchers and participants. Throughout Catherine has demonstrated how collage can be utilised as a trauma-informed method and in doing so, highlighted its material agency and its accessibility as an arts method. As part of her project Catherine also collaborated with the artist Jean McEwan on stop-motion animation collage ‘provocations’ as a resource for reflection with community artists and arts organisations.

Catherine undertook her PhD having over the years “run art sessions and projects with lots of different people and communities, becoming gradually aware of the impact of trauma on people and concerned to understand more deeply how artists can work with individuals more safely in a creative way.”

Catherine’s research was a SWW Doctoral Training Partnership project funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) exploring how artists can work safely with individuals and communities affected by trauma. Her supervisors were Jo Little (University of Exeter), Sarah Bodman (UWE) and Nicola Thomas (University of Exeter). You can find out more about Catherine’s research on her website.