Professor Josie Billington
Principal Investigator
Josie Billington is Professor in English at the University of Liverpool, specialising in Victorian Literature and literary reading and mental health. She has led a range of interdisciplinary research projects with colleagues in medicine and psychology, in partnership with arts organisations and health partners, regionally, nationally and internationally. She is Impact Lead for the School of Arts and co-leads the Arts, Mental Health and Wellbeing theme of the Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences of Health Medicine Technology (CHSSoHMT). She is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Peer Review College, a Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellow and Vice-President of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature.
Dr Grazia Imperiale, University of Glasgow
Maria Grazia Imperiale (CO-I) is Lecturer in Adult Education at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. Her research interests focus on language education for adult refugees and migrants, multilingualism, and intercultural education, and the relation between language education and wellbeing in challenging contexts. She has worked with participatory, decolonising and arts-based methodologies. She has conducted research in several contexts, including Palestine, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Italy and Scotland. She is a member of the steering committee of GRAMNet (Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network).
Dr Tonya Anisimovich
Project Co-ordinator
Dr Tonya Anisimovich is a media and communications scholar with a particular interest in the role of culture and cinema in negotiating traumatic memories. Antonina holds a PhD in Media from Edge Hill University. In her thesis, she explored the role of cinema in coming to terms with the past and used a qualitative mixed-methods approach combining textual film analysis, multiple focus groups with the audiences, and semi-structured interviews with film directors. Antonina’s broader scope of research interests includes collective memory studies, media memory, cinema-going, post-communist nostalgia, and historical representations on screen. Recently, she has been interested in the role that small independent cinemas play in the local communities, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has published on the role of cinemas in encouraging diversity and inclusivity, as well as on post-communist nostalgia as a social critique of neoliberalism.
Dr Wendy Asquith, web designer/developer.
Dr Wendy Asquith is a specialist in interdisciplinary research spanning the arts, humanities and social sciences and an experienced web designer for impact-focused academic projects. She is interested in how creative and community-led approaches can help us better address global challenges. In recent years this has seen Wendy lead the design and development of: the online exhibition How can we practice freedom? in collaboration with a team of curators based in East Africa for the Antislavery Knowledge Network and; the online resource LivCare, which showcases innovative arts in health partnerships from the Liverpool City Region. Wendy is also a Research Fellow with the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre, based in the Department of Politics at the University of Liverpool.
Advisory Board
Nazmi Abdel-Salam Al-Masri - Assoc. Professor in Education, Islamic University of Gaza (Occupied Palestinian Territories).
Katia Balabanova – Professor in Political Communication, Department of Communication & Media
Rhiannon Corcoran - Professor of Psychology/ ESRC What Works Centre for Wellbeing
Sara Cohen - Professor of Music, expert on community/popular arts
Paul Crawford – Professor, Health Sciences, University of Nottingham
Daisy Fancourt – Associate Professor, Behavioural Science and Health, University College
London
Alison Phipps - Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies, University of Glasgow, UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts.
Lisa Shaw - Professor of Modern Languages, expert on arts and older adult healthcare
Victoria Tischler – Professor, College of Medicine and Health, University of Exeter
Ross White – Professor, School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast
Dr Joanne Worsley, Dept of Public Health, Policy and Systems, University of Liverpool