The Culture, Politics and Lived Experience of Health: Zines at Wellcome Collection
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Kent
Department Name: Sch of English
Abstract
This PhD study will explore how the concept of liminality can be used to understand the work zines do, both in communicating lived experience of health and in supporting activism, specifically when situated in the institutional context of the Wellcome Library.
The objectives of this research are: to formulate a toolkit of interdisciplinary approaches to zines by investigating the description of liminal experiences and creation of liminal spaces in contemporary health zines, including the creation of a Zine Researcher's Code of Ethics through engagement with zine communities, researchers and librarians; to assess the Wellcome's zine collection; and to offer an alternative to narratives about the way archives, zine collections and libraries act on zines, exploring the ways that zines can act on the institution and more broadly the emerging iterative nature of the relationship between zines and zine collections/archives.
To achieve these objectives the proposed research questions will include the following:
- How is liminality summoned, created and communicated in the material, textual, visual, narrative and social in zines?
- What is an ethical approach to zines in a research context?
- How does the process of putting a zine in the Wellcome collection relate to the communities of practice from which zines emerge?
- What is the relationship of zine making as a ritual - a 'liminal affective technology' - to emergent digital technologies?
- How do zine collections act on the institution, and how does this relate to activism? How is this impacted by collection development, institutional attitudes and cultures, and cataloguing?
The objectives of this research are: to formulate a toolkit of interdisciplinary approaches to zines by investigating the description of liminal experiences and creation of liminal spaces in contemporary health zines, including the creation of a Zine Researcher's Code of Ethics through engagement with zine communities, researchers and librarians; to assess the Wellcome's zine collection; and to offer an alternative to narratives about the way archives, zine collections and libraries act on zines, exploring the ways that zines can act on the institution and more broadly the emerging iterative nature of the relationship between zines and zine collections/archives.
To achieve these objectives the proposed research questions will include the following:
- How is liminality summoned, created and communicated in the material, textual, visual, narrative and social in zines?
- What is an ethical approach to zines in a research context?
- How does the process of putting a zine in the Wellcome collection relate to the communities of practice from which zines emerge?
- What is the relationship of zine making as a ritual - a 'liminal affective technology' - to emergent digital technologies?
- How do zine collections act on the institution, and how does this relate to activism? How is this impacted by collection development, institutional attitudes and cultures, and cataloguing?
