Connected with meaning

In the midst of producing a special issue around science communication, broadly and creatively defined, the British Psychological Society's Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section (QMiP) came to town, and I popped downstairs in our Leicester office for this one-day event. Maybe I was primed for it, but everywhere I looked I saw psychologists in the midst of culture, making Psychology matter.

A main draw for me was the screening of a documentary, 'Blood in the blackbirds' field: A story of war, justice and resilience'. Blerina Kellezi, Associate Professor in Social and Trauma Psychology at Nottingham Trent University, was there to answer questions on this film she made in collaboration with 13 survivors of the Kosova war, and Kosova director Gazmend Bajri. As Lead of the Trauma, Social Isolation and Mental Health research group, Kellezi is well-versed in the positives and negatives of how people collectively experience and respond to traumatic events. Working in a refugee camp in the war during undergrad studies, and then doing a PhD in the country between 2002 and 2006, left her 'shocked and amazed by how people are affected, how they can survive and rebuild their lives.' 

In one village, Krusha e Madhe, 205 Kosovo Albanian civilians were massacred on 25-26 March 1999. 'Blood in the blackbirds' field' documents what happened through interviews with survivors, with Kellezi and collaborators 'removed as much as possible' (yet still facing, as she described, decisions over translation and editing where 'there isn't a right way of doing it'. 'There were other parts of the stories that could not be included,' she said, ominously.)

The film draws out main themes as a qualitative analysis would, with Kellezi saying they mapped every interview to draw out key points in the stories. These including the centrality of gender (at the time and since), identity ('We weren't free, even before the killings started… who would dare to go out? It was as if we were some sort of beasts'), and the pride in fighting ('Freedom is a precious thing. It's a big thing. You become the reason others experience freedom', and 'They were given the opportunity to show this land has owners, it has sons'). 

Survivors spoke about the role of stories in trauma, and in justice. 'We suffer more than those who read it in books,' said one. 'After 20 years, this documentary is made to show Europe what happened. The state of Kosovo is not interested. Our testimonies have disappeared… we don't know where that evidence went.' (Kellezi said that actually, their testimonies had informed some of the cases taken to the Hague, it's just that the survivors weren't properly informed of that. 'Justice has failed them in a different way.') But sharing those stories comes with risks. 'They're telling the next generation to be prepared, be alert… passing on that trauma,' Kellezi said. 'It's a luxury position to believe the world is safe and you can control it.'

These stories could have stayed on the page, be that in newspaper articles, books, or journals. And indeed, Kellezi has done the 'traditional' science. But her conviction that it is 'difficult to communicate the written stories', and that of the survivors that 'words will be forgotten', has produced something special (and award-winning). And underpinning it is a human rights approach to trauma: without that, Kellezi says, other aspects will be undermined. She has more work to do on the impact of participating, on both the survivors and the audiences, but she concludes that resilience is about 'not only surviving, but doing everything possible to achieve the best life that can be achieved. It's transforming the present, and future opportunities.' 

Also looking to survive and thrive were the participants, myself included, in the research of keynote speaker Professor Elizabeth Peel (Loughborough University) on canine-human connections in Covid, and beyond. Lockdown times 'brought into sharp relief our more than human world', Peel said, something too often ignored by Psychology. She quoted Anthony Podberscek – 'We are who we are as much because of our relationships with non-human animals as because of the human ones, and we do ourselves a great disservice – and probably great harm – by denying and ignoring this.'

Peel's survey, launched the week after Covid restrictions lifted, interrogated how our closeness with dogs served to attenuate, mediate and moderate our feelings and relationships. This was followed by online interviews – 'I enjoyed what having video brings to the data,' Peel said. 'A pandemic positive.' Peel then videotaped everyday interactions. Keeping the survey and interview data discrete enabled Peel to 'assess the depth and scope of these two forms of data,' perhaps countering 'the perception, either implicit or explicit, that survey data is somehow "less than"'. 

Dogs were, participants said, 'an antidote to armageddon and potential doom', the 'glue and the rock' in relationships and families, living on top of each other. There was a biological, mammalian quality to the impact of this closeness, with a participant reporting a 'huge injection of endorphins', prompting Peel to ponder posthumanist ideas around how we are, or how we should be, enmeshed with other animals.

Peel is also studying for a Counselling MSc, and the second half was a Rogerian, critical feminist exploration of 'the potential of pawsitivity', involving companion canines in therapy. Dogs aren't really embedded into counselling practice, Peel said: it's 'still seen as a niche area'. Peel is out to 'challenge the taken for granted human centrism', drawing up a thematic map including 'working like a dog', 'let sleeping dogs lie' (potential pitfalls as well as positives), and 'every dog has its day: wider canine presence and life lessons'. Peel says there's an argument for therapy to become a more multi-species affair, including blurring the boundary between trained therapy dog and companion dog. 'Dogs physically lean in to clients and are emotionally attuned to them', she said. One participant said 'My dog licks away tears': 'Can you imagine if a human therapist did that?', Peel mused.

Both Covid and speciesism also loomed large for Dr Annayah Prosser (University of Bath) in her QMiP Citation in Doctoral Excellence Prize Talk. Her journey was, she said, 'the full Covid PhD experience'. Necessity led to the use of 'remotely moderated focus groups' as 'a new frontier for group discussion methods', in the area of 'moralised minority groups'. Saying that 'the best way to look at group behaviour is to look at how groups talk about things', Prosser applied that discourse analysis approach to the 'conversational strategies' vegans and vegetarians have to deflect from their veganism in intergroup contexts'. 

Here again was Psychology out in the field, literally, with Prosser's fieldwork at the Vegan Camp Out showing how mass gatherings can provide respite and rekindle shared identity and social action efforts in moralised minority groups. Prosser concluded with a reminder that a PhD is about the process, not the outcome. 'Advocating for yourselves and others is important: use whatever power that you have to lift up others'. Also, give yourself room for the 'side quests' – in this case, open research in qualitative methods – as they could become the 'main event'.

The afternoon closed with a showcase of work committee members are doing, again with creativity threaded through the inputs and outputs. Dr Simon Goodman (De Montfort University) worked with a journalism scholar to collect data from Twitter in January 2020, around the 'discursive groundwork' often used as a justification for violence. 'Almost everyone says they want peace, yet the meaning of "peace" is taken for granted, Goodman said. In the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict, he gave examples of 'binarism', with peace or war the only options presented; 'dogma', with only war presented as able to bring peace; and both 'sides' blaming each other for the lack of peace, while presenting their own initiatives as in the service of peace. Interestingly, a pro-peace position can (perhaps increasingly) be presented on social media as naïve, and 'fawning'. In this way, 'talk about peace can be used to justify violence'.

Bringing us back to Covid times, William Day (Aston University) invited participants to take photos representing their day-to-day experiences of living with a chronic, 'unseen' health condition. Photos are, Day said, 'full of intentionality; a way of deepening our horizons of understanding. They can show what would be needed for holistic, meaningful change to our material worlds.' And in his research, they showed 'potentialities, empathy and growth': Covid did enable new ways of engaging with the world, and for Day's participants this was 'rooted in an increased empathy from others – an approximation of what it must be like to live with a chronic health condition'. People claiming welfare found they had greater choice and autonomy over how assessments were carried out, and that there was 'a greater attempt at understanding' when compared with the previously 'robotic' approach. 

However, these had to remain 'secret joys', with participants feeling 'out of sync' with those around them. All this reflective insight could be found in the digital photography: a method, Day said, that 'requires little skill, is close to hand and familiar for participants, but still produces data rich with meaning.' This cultural enabling is also seen with cinematic offerings such as 'I, Daniel Blake', which Day said is a 'discursive touchpoint' in this area.

Also drawing on the media was Dr Philippa Carr (UWE Bristol), drawing on education documentaries such as Channel 4's The Great British School Swap to investigate how working class young people are depicted. Carr showed vividly how meritocratic discourse dominates in such programmes. Working class young people are presented as requiring parental support to succeed, lacking self-belief and aspirational attitudes, and as trapped in a cycle. Education is portrayed solely as preparation for employment. To do well, you must conform, 'keep your head down'. As a slight aside, I must say that as a parent of a son going through A-levels it makes my blood boil to see the blanket way they are still presented by teachers as the gold standard over more vocational routes. 

Finally, Dr Candice Whitaker (Leeds Trinity University) closed with a consideration of how men navigate being men. This was personal: Whitaker has three teenage girls and has just had her first boy. Doing the research, 'I really felt it,' Whitaker said: 'I can't explain it any more than I felt it', evoking Tone Pernille Ostern's thoughts on the 'sensuous body' in post-qualitative enquiry. 

Men's endorsement of 'traditional masculinity' is associated with numerous adverse individual and social outcomes. 'I want to do something; I want to see a change', Whitaker said. But actually going in to talk about these things with teenage boys is problematic. There's personal shame, and a 'lack of alternative discourses' (although Whitaker did note that masculinities are plural). Whitaker, then, used an anonymous online qualitative survey of men aged 18-57, with 'reflexive thematic analysis' to inform future co-creation work.

A 'motif' emerged – being a man as 'the perpetual confrontation and negotiation of (un)manliness'. Things are changing, but at a fairly surface level – 'boys don't cry, but they do wear nail polish now'. Strength remains key to masculinity and what it means to be a man. Men can, however, be strong by 'talking up and talking out'. 

Whitaker closed by saying she's working with an artist to create a pre-school book, and that the research has also prompted her to write letters to her son. And for me, that encapsulated the day: introduced as a 'small but perfectly formed group, which is exactly what QMiP should be about', but also about looking both inwards and outwards, making creative and compassionate connections in the real world.