Dr Meg Jensen

Kingston School of Art
Department of Humanities
School of Creative and Cultural Industries
Penrhyn Road

Professor in English Literature and Creative Writing

Email:: m.jensen@kingston.ac.uk

About

My research focuses on representations of human rights violation and/or traumatic experience in narrative form, and the social, cultural, gendered and familial contexts in which such works are produced.

Recent applied projects, funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the UNDP, assessed the effectiveness of Expressive Writing methodologies in supporting the well-being of women victims of sexual violence in conflict in Iraq and AHRC funded work with communities in crisis across Lebanon.

My most recent publications including the monograph The Art and Science of Trauma and the Autobiographical: Negotiated Truths, Palgrave 2019, evaluate a range of life narrative forms that represent traumatic experience (memoir, testimony, poetry, graphic novels, monuments, autobiographical novels, etc) and consider the relationship between such works and current behavioural, psychological, and neurochemical approaches to diagnosing and treating traumatic disorders.

Finally, my practice-based research takes the form of creative non-fiction and autobiographical novels concerned with representations of traumatic experience.

Qualifications

BA Liberal Arts, Sarah Lawrence College, New York (1985)
MA English Literature (Distinction), New York University, 1991
PhD English Literature Queen Mary, University of London, 1996
Senior Fellow Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) 2017

Domains

I publish widely on the relationship between memory, trauma, the autobiographical and the advancement of human rights and conduct funded interdisciplinary applied research on the uses of Expressive Writing for supporting well-being in survivors of traumatic experiences.

Funded Projects include:

Expressive Life Writing and Telling During Crisis: Addressing Urgent Needs in the Akkar Governate, Lebanon

December 2020: AHRC Research Grant £25,000 as Co-I

The primary research question of this project is: "How can Expressive Life Writing be deployed during an acute crisis to support well-being for social workers and their most vulnerable clients especially women and girls?"The secondary research questions of this project are: "What are the most effective means of reaching vulnerable subjects isolated by crisis situations with ELW -online, with an App, by phone?" and "How can ELW be taken to scale as part of a well-being centered response to building resilience in the face of a crisis?"If the research provides satisfactory answers to these questions, then this project will produce a universally available, stress tested, step change in the use of ELW as a form of rapidly deployable assistance for the trauma, stress and pressure of quickly evolving crisis situations.

Expressive Writing: support for Front Line Health Care Workers during and after the COVID-19 Outbreakhttps://www.kingston.ac.uk/news/article/2393/12-oct-2020-expressive-writing-project-from-kingston-university-to-help-covid19-healthcare-workers-overcome-traumatic-experiences/

April 2020: awarded £10,000 by Viaro Energy, Ltd. to research, develop and deliver support to Front Line Health Care Workers during the COVID-19 outbreak. The research project will also test the efficacy of an innovative multilingual, freely accessible digital model for the successful dissemination of Expressive Writing training and exercises, gathering feedback via online surveys.

AHRC Global Research Funding £21,000 in 2018 and £26,000 in 2019

Expressive Writing Capacity Building with Akkar Network for Development (AND), Beirut

United Nations Development Programme SIRI project, Iraq, £1,500 in 2017. Expressive Writing Capacity Building https://www.iq.undp.org/content/iraq/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2018/11/04/undp-supporting-women-crsv-and-sgbv-survivors-of-trauma.html

Dear Diary Exhibition: Somerset House June 2017 Produced and exhibited filmed refugee diaries: http://tsrnetwork.org/news-network/publications/

UK Cabinet Office Countering Violent Extremism Programme, £7,400 in 2017

UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Human Rights Fund, Stigma Project: £2,400 in 2016 http://www.inmaairaq.com/drejae.aspx?=hewal&jmare=86&Jor=1

Publications

Expressive writing and telling and participatory action research : developing a relational ethics of practice for story-based interventions in crisis settings

Campbell, Siobhan and Jensen, Meg, 2024, Journal of Poetry Therapy

Dr Meg Jensen

Faculties, deparments and locations

About

Qualifications

Domains

Teaching and learning Open

Research Open

Publications

Authored Books Open

Articles Open

Book Chapters Open

Conference items Open

Performances Open

Videos of my work

Hauntology Poem for Writers Kingston November 2020

Writers Kingston Nordic Poetry Festival November 2019

Interview Rachel Cusk on Outline, Beyond Borders Festival

Introduction to Katherine Mansfield

Writers Centre Kingston Event on Forgetting Jan 2018

Life Writing Course

Introduction to Life Writing

Hauntology: History, Culture, Trauma

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