CHRIS FREMANTLE

Just saw this on jobs.ac.uk – another important development.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Rural Health and Creative Community Engagement – University of the Highlands and Islands – jobs.ac.uk.

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (PDRF), funded until June 2016, to conduct qualitative work within Highland. The work will explore the nature of the relationships between rural community life, identity, health and well-being.

The post is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council as part of a large grant in the Connected Communities Programme, led by Prof. Gareth Williams at Cardiff University. The overarching aim of the project is to establish how community representations produced through creative arts practices (e.g. storytelling, performance, visual art) can be used as forms of evidence to inform health-related policy and service development. Through analysis of existing representations of communities in literature, film etc. and the production of new community self-representations, the work will explore the relationship between ‘official’ representations of community health and well-being (e.g. in statistical data) and how communities understand and present their own health and well-being.

The project will take place across five distinct case-study communities in Wales, Scotland and England. This post will be based within the UHI Department of Diabetes and Cardiovascular Science (Inverness) and affiliated with the Centre for Rural Health (a joint research centre for UHI and the University of Aberdeen). The PDRF will be report to Dr. Sarah-Anne Munoz who is leading the remote and rural work within the larger project. The PDRF will carry out a remote and rural community case study to feed into the wider project. As one of several PDRFs appointed to the project, the successful candidate will be expected to collaborate with the other PDRFs and members of the academic team. This will involve attending team meetings throughout the UK.

The post involves a focus on understanding and gathering existing representations of a Highland community; both artistic (e.g. in literature) and formal (e.g. statistics) and then using creative engagement methods (e.g. life mapping, storytelling and deep mapping) to work with community members to generate new self-representations. This work will be in partnership with arts and health organisations/professionals.

The successful candidate will have a PhD in a health humanities area relevant to the project themes and have experience of carrying out qualitative research. Experience of using participatory and/or creative methods would be beneficial.

The closing date is Sunday 29 September 2013 and interviews will be held on 15 October 2013 in Inverness.