Dr Josephine Biglin
School of Health & Society
Current positions
Lecturer in Psychology
Biography
I am a sociological/community psychologist and joined Salford in 2022. I work in the fields of race, migration, mobility and citizenship. I have a BSc in Psychology, and an MSc in Research Psychology, both from Manchester Metropolitan University. I completed my PhD at the University of Manchester in 2022, where I now hold an honorary research fellow position.
Throughout my academic career I have volunteered with the third sector with people seeking asylum and with refugee status. Alongside writing academic outputs I enjoy writing for independent media in an attempt to make knowledge more accessible.
Areas of Research
My research centers around these three core areas:
Creative, participatory methods and political subjectivity. I have been been exploring critical links between place, belonging and citizenship made by people with a refugee background using creative participatory methods, particularly photography as a form of resistance and act of citizenship.
Therapeutic landscapes. I am also interested in the links between displacement, (re)emplacement, place and wellbeing and have published research on the importance of community growing/green spaces to people with a refugee background. I am currently carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in an urban allotment for refugee and asylum seekers.
Immigration discourses and the social construction of asylum seekers; nation and immigration. As a unique case study of migration narratives, I have critically examined social survey questions items that aim to capture people's attitudes to immigration using critical discourse analysis. I am currently carrying out interviews with migrants on their interpretation of survey questions.
My methodology is situated within participatory research; arts-based methods and sensory and embodied ways of knowing.
Areas of Supervision
Asylum; place; belonging; citizenship; wellbeing; creative participatory methods; politics; sensory ethnography.
I currently teach qualitative methods; social and community psychology environmental psychology; media psychology; colonialism and psychiatry and global issues in psychology.
I am EDI co-lead for my subject and am currently working on initiatives to eradicate the attainment gap and decolonise T&L practice.
I coordinate a voluntary opportunity for UG students to provide English Language Conversation classes to migrants in the local area, please get in touch if this is of interest to you.
Finally, I am currently working with a group within the university on our application for University of Sanctuary status.