Professor Josie Billington BA (Hons.), PGCE, MA, PhD
Professor English
- +44 (0)151 794 2734
- Work email Jbilling@liverpool.ac.uk
Research
Literary Reading
Uses and value of literature beyond the academy;
Reading aloud and reading processes;
Medical Humanities;
Psychology of reading;
Psychodynamics of reading groups;
Children and reading (including issues of attachment);
Reading and health;
Literature in prisons, literature and depression,
Literature and dementia;
Cultural value, forms of assessment and evaluation.
Victorian Literature
Nineteenth-century realism;
Victorian novel;
Victorian women's fiction (George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant);
Victorian poetry (especially Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Victorian sonnet);
Creative process (via original manuscript material);
Free indirect discourse.
Research Grants
AHRC IAA 22-25
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
April 2022 - December 2025
Seeing Arts Health Research Enacted (SHARED): Understanding what works for whom in arts-based approaches for mental health and wellbeing globally (SHARED)
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
August 2022 - July 2023
COVID-19 CARE: Culture and the Arts, from Restriction to Enhancement: Protecting Mental Health in the Liverpool City Region
UK RESEARCH AND INNOVATION
August 2020 - January 2022
Co-creating online literary resources to build a national future for reader volunteering and a real-world legacy of the Cultural Value Project.
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
June 2017 - May 2018
A practice-infromed study of the theoretical bases for bibliotherapy in the English literary tradition (Elizabethan or Victoria Periods)
MERSEY CARE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST (UK)
October 2009 - September 2013
A Study of a Literature Based Intervention with Women in Prison
NATIONAL PERSONALITY DISORDER PROGRAM (UK)
April 2011 - March 2014
Reading as Catalyst for Change.
MERSEY CARE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST (UK)
April 2015 - October 2019
How to promote children's language development using family-based shared book reading.
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
April 2015 - August 2018
Assessing the intrinsic value, and health and well-being benefits, for individual and community, of The Reader Organisation's Volunteer Reader Scheme.
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
September 2013 - September 2014
MerseyBeat- Best Evidence, Application and Translation of Research. An investigation into the therapeutic benefits of reading in relation to depression and well-being.
LIVERPOOL PRIMARY CARE TRUST (UK)
January 2009 - June 2011
Reading for Pleasure and Adult Literacy.
MARS UK LIMITED (UK)
December 2014 - December 2018
Permission to play: taking play seriously; making sport playful
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
February 2012 - October 2012
Participatory Arts for Well-Being: Past and Present Practices
ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL
January 2011 - December 2011
Reading and Chronic Pain.
BRITISH ACADEMY (UK)
May 2014 - June 2015
The Reader Organisation’s Whole Population Project in Lambeth and Southwark.
GUY'S AND ST THOMAS' CHARITY (UK)
November 2013 - December 2017
Research Collaborations
Haesun Moon, Arlinda Ruco
Project: Relational and Appreciative Practices in Healthcare
External: TAOS Institute, US
Relational and Appreciative Practices in Healthcare (Taos Institute, US)
Dr Mette Steenberg
Project: Reading and Mental Health
External: Interacting Minds Centre, University of Aarhus
Co-leads of research coalition for literary reading and wellbeing, IGEL (International Society for Empirical Aesthetics)
Professor Rhiannon Corcoran
Project: Reading and Mental Health
Internal
Interdisciplinary (mixed methods) study of the benefits of shared reading for adult mental health and the mechanisms/processes which mediate benefit.
Dr Rachael Levy
Project: ESRC Reading with Children and Families
External: University of Sheffield
Related work packages on the benefits of a shared reading for pleasure intervention in children aged 0-5.
Dr Jane Milling
External: The University of Exeter
AHRC funded research network on participatory arts for well-being (with University of Glamorgan).
Professor Hamish Fyfe
External: University of Glamorgan
AHRC funded research network on participatiry arts for well-being.
Professor Peter Kinderman
Internal
Benefits of reading for pleasure for looked after children.
Dr David Fearnley
External: Merseycare NHS Trust
Co-supervisor of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award laying clinical/literary foundations for Bibliotherapy.
Professor Philip Davis
Internal
Selection of Elizabeth Barrett Brownng's poetry for revised Oxford Authors series (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2013).
Dr Jude Robinson
Internal
MerseyBEAT-funded project (£45,000) on benefits of reading in relaton to depression.
Dept of Health/Home Office funded project (£50,000) on benefits ofreading for female prisoners with personaility disorder.
Professor Chris Dowrick
Internal
MerseyBEAT - funded project (£45,000) on benefits of reading in relation to depression.