Dr Lou Harvey

Profile

I am an educationalist, first-generation university student, haunted fiction writer, thwarted early-music singer, wayward flâneuse, and practising neuroqueer working across a range of educational settings, with a particular interest in intercultural (broadly understood) and arts-related contexts. I am committed to challenging deficit orientations to communication - based on perceptions of linguistic, cultural and/or cognitive credibility, and the assumption that only what is sayable can be understood - and supporting the recognition and audibility of our many ways of knowing. My work aims to develop creative theoretical and methodological approaches to listening to the unsayable, and to expand our understanding of voice beyond and besides language.

I am part of a growing Creative Health research hub led by the Cultural Institute at Leeds, bringing together researchers, practitioners, cultural organisations and policy partners across the region to explore how creativity can support individual and community wellbeing. I have recently collaborated with Circus Leeds and two Leeds primary schools to research the effect of community circus on children's wellbeing, understanding wellbeing as produced through the recognition and support of children's many (sayable and unsayable) ways of knowing. My latest project explores the intersection of the intercultural and neurodiversity fields, specifically how theories and methods for listening to the unsayable may inform each other, and how they might facilitate greater access to audibility for marginalised people.

From 2018-2020 I was co-investigator on several AHRC-funded projects in South Africa led by Professor Paul Cooke, investigating the relationship between participatory arts, voice, and leadership for children and young people. I also led the Consolidating Learning strand of the AHRC GCRF project Changing the Story, which asked how the arts, heritage and human rights education can support youth-centred approaches to civil society-building in post-conflict setting across the world. This work led to my concept transrational voice, which describes the expression of knowledge beyond rational explanation and which cannot be easily put into words. As part of The May Group author collective I co-wrote the open-access book Youth Voice and Participatory Arts in Global Development, which summarises the breadth of these projects and more.

I co-founded the AILA Research Network on Creative Inquiry and Applied Linguistics (2018-2021) with Dr Jessica Bradley (University of Sheffield) and Dr Emilee Moore (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), and the AHRC International Research Network Communicating the Unsayable: Learning at the Intersection of Language and the Arts with Dr Emilee Moore and Dr Cristina Aliagas Marin, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and museum and third-sector partners in UK and Catalonia. My interest in the power of the arts as/for research arose from participating in the first DARE edition of Leeds Creative Labs, I worked with theatre company Cap-a-Pie to adapt my ESRC-funded doctoral research for theatrical performance. With funding from the Society for Research in Higher Education and Arts Council England, we developed The Translator, performed at Slung Low in Holbeck in June 2017, which won the University of Leeds Public Engagement with Research Award.

Responsibilities

• I am Programme Leader for the Doctor of Education (EdD).

Research interests

My work aims to develop creative theoretical and methodological approaches to listening to the unsayable, and to expand our understanding of voice beyond and besides language. I engage creative inquiry as both method and manifesto for generating knowledge ethically, collaboratively, and imaginatively, using artistic, aesthetic, and concept-as-method and approaches. My research is underpinned by neuroqueering and the transrational, philosophies with different intellectual lineages but which converge in unsettling neuronormativity, individualism, and sayability, and engaging affective, aesthetic, embodied, collective, unsayable ways of knowing and being.

Qualifications

• PhD Language Education (University of Manchester 2014)
• MSc Educational Research (University of Manchester 2010)
• MA Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (University of Manchester 2008)
• MA (Hons) English Language and Literature (University of Edinburgh 2005)

Professional memberships

• International Association of Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC)

Student education

I supervise PhD students working in intercultural, peace and development education, migrant integration and education, and decolonisation and social justice in higher education, often using creative and non-traditional methodologies. I welcome inquiries for projects related to learning and creative practice in a range of educational settings.

I lead and co-teach on modules related to creativity and play for learning, and the future of education.

Research groups and institutes

• ICY: Inclusion, Childhood & Youth Research Centre

Current postgraduate researchers

• Joanne McCulloch
• Sangeeta Rani
• Helen R. Robinson
• Hannah Wainwright
• Mengjin Zhang
• Anfal Almesbah