For my Creative Writing doctoral research I am working towards producing a short story cycle centred around the theme of the disability experience. I bring both my creative praxis developed on my BA in creative writing as well as an additional background in analytic philosophy courtesy of my MSc in Political Theory. My research dialogues with the disability experience by drawing together my own auto-ethnographic reflections with Social Science and Political Thought to enhance critical discussion of my creative work's aesthetic underpinning.
Whilst volunteering, I witnessed how both ethnographic and auto-ethnographic data collection could illuminate ‘the disability experience.' This has inspired me to write a novel expanding on some of my reflections. For my doctorate, I wish to write this novel, whilst engaging in an auto-ethnographic exploration of ‘the disability experience.'
After completing a BA in Creative Writing I diversified my academic repertoire, via studying for a Masters in Political Theory, enhancing the depth of my creative ideas through research. Whether it was Marx's theory of alienation, providing language to describe emotional tensions between the roles of PA and friend, studying post-structuralism, inviting challenges to the notion of social groups as homogenous, or applying Nietzsche's writings on the ‘will to power' to ideas about disabled people's autonomy, this MSc became an intellectual foundation for my PhD in Creative Writing.