Carrie Foulkes
For research and teaching: carrie.foulkes@glasgow.ac.uk
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7065-8678
Research title: Renunciation Exercises: An interdisciplinary research project exploring narratives of illness and bereavement
Research Summary
DFA Practice-based Research
Drawing on literary and critical research, contemplative movement practices and clinical massage experience, my doctoral project is investigating the ways in which hybrid artistic forms can generate new modes of conveying stories of the body along the spectrum of sickness and health.
I am investigating contemporary theory and practice in the Medical Humanities to inform a collection of creative nonfiction essays. My texts weave together memoir and research, drawing on my training in bodywork, lived experiences of illness and loss and my work as a massage therapist in palliative and oncological care. I am deploying autopathological and autotheoretical methods to situate personal experiences in a broader social context.
My exploration of the intersections of culture, lived experience, politics and health combines scholarly research and creative writing. I aim to contribute to holistic understandings of human wellbeing, taking inspiration from formally experimental writers on the body such as Sarah Manguso, Anne Boyer, Maggie Nelson and Jenn Ashworth as well as contemporary theorists including Lauren Fournier and Sara Ahmed.
As an integral part of my research, I am interviewing creative health practitioners including body-psychotherapists, dance therapists and healthcare professionals.
Research Interests
Visual art, theatre, dance and performance, creative health, aesthetics, architecture, experimental literature, text and image, lyric essay, poetry and poetics, subjectivity and embodiment, affect theory, critical disability studies, narrative studies, moral philosophy and bioethics.
Grants
- University of Glasgow, College of Arts Research Support Award, 2024
- Dissertation Fellowship, Harry Ransom Center, 2024
- The Politics of Art & Social Change: Rights in Focus Conference Bursary, 2023
- BJCEM Uncivilised Paradigms conference participation award, 2022
- University of Glasgow, College of Arts Research Support Award, 2022
- Turing Scheme, doctoral mobility award, 2022
Conferences
- Futures Ahead, Medical Humanities Conference, Linköping University, Sweden, 2023
- The Politics of Art & Social Change: Rights in Focus Conference, South London Gallery, 2023
- Bees, Bodies, Buildings: Agency and Care in Architecture, Uncivilised Paradigms Conference, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy, 2022
Teaching
- Comparative Literature - Introduction to Literary Criticism and Theory, School of Modern Languages & Cultures
- Cultural Representations of Death and Dying, University of Glasgow MSc End of Life Studies
Additional Information
- Harry Ransom Centre Fellow, University of Texas at Austin, 2024-2025
- Guest researcher at the Centre for Medical Humanities and Bioethics, Linköping University, Sweden, 2022
- DeathWrites Network Research Assisant
- Member of the Glasgow End of Life Studies group
- Member of the Glasgow Medical Humanities Network
- Member of FHT Federation of Holistic Therapists
- Member of a-n The Artists Information Company