Anne Boultwood
Birmingham City University, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Reader in the Psychology of Fashion
Anne is Reader in the Psychology of Fashion at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. Her primary research focus is the role of fashion and clothing in the construction and maintenance of self, and their social and psychological impact. She has extended her early work on body boundary to address its broader implications for self and body awareness, including cultural and gender differences, social interaction, and notions of control. She supervises a number of students in related areas.
Anne established and leads the Fashion and Textiles Research Group within BIAD. Current research projects include: historical fashion and costume, jewellery and its relation to self, sustainability in fashion, and cross-cultural fashion, particularly China and India. She has established the CRAFTED fashion network, which involves academics from a number of institutions, museums and galleries, and commercial designers, to promote collaborative research on the power and politics of fashion.
Anne also has considerable expertise in research training and development, ethical issues in art and design, and research-led public engagement. She has been involved in a number of initiatives, for example the Researcher Education and Development (RED) initiative, to introduce a range of programmes and resources, including the BIAD Research Summer School which has attracted attendees from academic institutions across the Midlands and the online BIAD professional Development Network which she set up to facilitate interdisciplinary mentoring of doctoral students and early career researchers.
Anne established and leads the Fashion and Textiles Research Group within BIAD. Current research projects include: historical fashion and costume, jewellery and its relation to self, sustainability in fashion, and cross-cultural fashion, particularly China and India. She has established the CRAFTED fashion network, which involves academics from a number of institutions, museums and galleries, and commercial designers, to promote collaborative research on the power and politics of fashion.
Anne also has considerable expertise in research training and development, ethical issues in art and design, and research-led public engagement. She has been involved in a number of initiatives, for example the Researcher Education and Development (RED) initiative, to introduce a range of programmes and resources, including the BIAD Research Summer School which has attracted attendees from academic institutions across the Midlands and the online BIAD professional Development Network which she set up to facilitate interdisciplinary mentoring of doctoral students and early career researchers.
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Books by Anne Boultwood
This chapter will focus on women’s self-understanding and its relation to the body. While for both men and women self-awareness includes body-awareness, for women, the relationship is more fundamental and the body is a significant aspect of the self. This is well exemplified by the way in which self-control, or more accurately control of the self, is routinely applied to the body. Bodies are perceived as being subject to control through diet and exercise, and obese women are described as being out of control or lacking in self-control. Clothes clearly have an influence on body image, but the relationship is more intimate than this would suggest. Because they sit next to the body, clothes have an inward aspect that is closely related to body awareness, especially when there is a discrepancy between the two, as happens when clothes do not fit, thus highlighting the body’s shortcomings. In terms of awareness, the two become intertwined, and attitudes and beliefs associated with the body/self extend to feelings about the clothes. This is apparent in attitudes to various aspects of control. Clothes are often discussed in terms of what cannot be worn because of age, size, acceptance and fashion. This attitude to control includes the perceived controlling attitudes of others, for example, what a husband might not like, or what friends or colleagues might not approve. Clothing then has an important role to play in self-awareness, and fashion assumes a significance belied by its apparent superficiality. This chapter will explore these issues, making reference to my own research with women, exploring their relationship with their bodies and their attitude to clothing.
Conference Presentations by Anne Boultwood
This paper will discuss a case study of an online mentoring network that facilitated reciprocal mentoring between postgraduate researchers across four research organisations. While peer mentoring has been introduced successfully at many educational levels, it is still a relatively novel practice in doctoral education, and tends to adopt a traditional, one-to-one model, which relies heavily on careful matching of mentor and mentee. Similarly, though PGR networks are increasingly common, they tend to focus on information dissemination and often have a social focus. They are also normally restricted to one institution.
The Peer Mentoring Forum was set up primarily to support students working on a joint public engagement project. Its aim was to provide a non-hierarchical space where researchers could share concerns with their peers, possibly to seek advice, but certainly to discuss issues. Because the network operated across four institutions, it was also intended to facilitate networking.
The paper discusses the benefits and challenges of this approach and the measures adopted to address them. While initial engagement was poor, the introduction of specific measures encouraged more widespread use. However, the forum was used primarily as a means of sharing information, and findings suggest that face-to-face methods are preferred.
Traditionally, the academic route to research is via the PhD, thus ensuring that the researcher acquires the appropriate knowledge and expertise. When this is not the case, whether through necessity or circumstance, it is difficult for those with the potential for research to know where to begin. This session will explore the issues involved in establishing a research culture in an academic department with no research tradition, and working with emerging researchers. By emerging researchers I mean those who are new to, or are interested in pursuing, research, but who have no prior experience: in this case, academics who have substantial subject knowledge and are experienced teachers. Many of them are planning to undertake a doctorate in the near future, but in the meantime, they need support and guidance. In approaching the project I faced two major challenges: firstly, encouraging a research ethos in a community with little confidence in its capacity for research; and secondly, developing a programme of researcher development appropriate for this naive audience. I will consider the nature of these challenges, how I responded to them, and the design of an associated development programme. Discussion will focus on future planning and the difficulties still to be overcome.
Over the years the nature of provision for PhD researchers has changed radically. The original apprentice model was first supplemented by research training, with a focus on research methodology and practice, which itself has been supplanted by a more generic researcher development model, driven by skills acquisition. Research expectations have also changed: collaborative research is encouraged, particularly if interdisciplinary. As the notion of impact becomes established, research increasingly involves collaboration with external organisations. Research has not only become more outward facing, but has also had to deal with complex funding issues.
This shift in emphasis has involved different, and very advanced, skill sets. It is assumed that established researchers, by the nature of what they do, will have developed these attributes, and for many this is the case. For those involved in doctoral education, however, it highlights the wide range of abilities new researchers must seek to develop, especially since the PhD is no longer seen solely as the route to an academic career. To address the changing needs of doctoral education, the academy has focused on a top-down, skills development model, which identifies skill sets and breaks these down into specific skills to be acquired, using tools such as the Researcher Development Framework.
This paper’s title derives from a conversation in Pride and Prejudice, in which Mr Darcy states that he only knows six truly accomplished women; following the enumeration of all the skills they must possess, Elizabeth Bennet wonders at his knowing any. The challenge for doctoral education today is similar: how to support doctoral students to develop the vast range of skills and abilities they will need in their future careers. I will explore various approaches to addressing these issues, including the relative roles of supervisor and researcher developers, and with reference to innovations in my own institution, will consider an alternative model that focuses on learning by doing.
and where the user is standing detached from the experience. This perspective undervalues experiencing the landscape as a whole and contrasts with our proposal to provide insights on perceiving and sensing it in the course of active engagement, such as walking through, bringing a self-perspective and an interpretative construction of the experience as a participant.
This work aims to investigate how people perceive and interact with urban nature, examining the emotional responses to designed landscapes, involving user based narratives, and to explore links between places and individuals, memories and attachment.
For research purposes two case study areas have been established, one in Portugal and another in the UK, on the basis that they are both designed landscapes with a certain range
of different environments and well established user/visitor groups. Participants were selected from everyday users and landscape architects and invited to engage in a set of environment encounters based on self-narrated walks and reflective diaries during a period of 6-9 months encompassing at least two contrasting seasons. This approach allowed obtaining user complex personal descriptions, meanings and understandings into how the places were experienced.
Research identified the unique aspects of place attachment and memory retrieval that accompanies self-narrated walking involving the movement from everyday places to special
places. Participants demonstrated that walking on their own allowed them to transcend and explore their “self-world”, to uncover unique feelings, emotions and moments. These are drawn from their memories, the mental and physical reinterpretation and reconstruction of past experiences and spaces. The interactions involved were revealed by the individuals narrations and demonstrated a profound sense of personal renewal involving a closeness with “nature”, reinforcing a sense of the self.
Findings emphasized the importance of memory in the ways that individuals interact with the landscape prompted by the immediacy of the moment that they occur and further our
understanding of the restorative qualities of urban nature. Additionally, personal narratives exploring emotional responses of individuals to designed landscapes can contribute to landscape architecture research by challenging the design of such places and new ways of engagement.
Articles by Anne Boultwood
Papers by Anne Boultwood
Over the last year, I have worked with a small group of staff, piloting a range of methods and approaches, and gaining insight into their motivation and learning. Given that one of our biggest challenges has been one of staff engagement, the project has adopted a participatory action research model, which has been shown to address issues of engagement (Foth and Brynskov, 2016). Based on evaluation of these methods, together with feedback from participants, we have established an ERLab, a space where emerging researchers can experiment with their own burgeoning practice and we can explore more systematically the effectiveness of this strategy. The programme will foster a community of practice approach (Wilson, 2014), and involves a mix of formal teaching, practical research activity and mentoring. The emphasis will be on experiential learning (Kolb, 1984), potentially involving staff in existing research projects (Costello and Shaw, 2013) where appropriate.
The paper will reflect on previous experience, consider this in the light of its theoretical underpinning, and will discuss the challenges and possible solutions of the coming year.
COSTELLO, R. & SHAW, N. 2013. The Development of a Blended Learning Experience to Enable a Personalised Learning Approach to Researcher Development for Research Students. The International Journal of Learnng in Higher Education, 19, 75-82.
FOTH, M. & BRYNSKOV, M. 2016. Participatory action research for civic engagement. In: GORDON, E. & MIHAILIDIS, P. (eds.) Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
KOLB, D. A. 1984. Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall.
MCCORMACK, J., PROPPER, C. & SMITH, S. 2014. Herding Cats? Management and University Performance. The Economic Journal, 124, F534-F564.
WILSON, M. 2014. Discipline Problems and the Ethos of Research. In: WILSON, M. & VAN RUITEN, S. (eds.) Handbook for Artistic Research Education. Amsterdam: ELIA.
This chapter will focus on women’s self-understanding and its relation to the body. While for both men and women self-awareness includes body-awareness, for women, the relationship is more fundamental and the body is a significant aspect of the self. This is well exemplified by the way in which self-control, or more accurately control of the self, is routinely applied to the body. Bodies are perceived as being subject to control through diet and exercise, and obese women are described as being out of control or lacking in self-control. Clothes clearly have an influence on body image, but the relationship is more intimate than this would suggest. Because they sit next to the body, clothes have an inward aspect that is closely related to body awareness, especially when there is a discrepancy between the two, as happens when clothes do not fit, thus highlighting the body’s shortcomings. In terms of awareness, the two become intertwined, and attitudes and beliefs associated with the body/self extend to feelings about the clothes. This is apparent in attitudes to various aspects of control. Clothes are often discussed in terms of what cannot be worn because of age, size, acceptance and fashion. This attitude to control includes the perceived controlling attitudes of others, for example, what a husband might not like, or what friends or colleagues might not approve. Clothing then has an important role to play in self-awareness, and fashion assumes a significance belied by its apparent superficiality. This chapter will explore these issues, making reference to my own research with women, exploring their relationship with their bodies and their attitude to clothing.
This paper will discuss a case study of an online mentoring network that facilitated reciprocal mentoring between postgraduate researchers across four research organisations. While peer mentoring has been introduced successfully at many educational levels, it is still a relatively novel practice in doctoral education, and tends to adopt a traditional, one-to-one model, which relies heavily on careful matching of mentor and mentee. Similarly, though PGR networks are increasingly common, they tend to focus on information dissemination and often have a social focus. They are also normally restricted to one institution.
The Peer Mentoring Forum was set up primarily to support students working on a joint public engagement project. Its aim was to provide a non-hierarchical space where researchers could share concerns with their peers, possibly to seek advice, but certainly to discuss issues. Because the network operated across four institutions, it was also intended to facilitate networking.
The paper discusses the benefits and challenges of this approach and the measures adopted to address them. While initial engagement was poor, the introduction of specific measures encouraged more widespread use. However, the forum was used primarily as a means of sharing information, and findings suggest that face-to-face methods are preferred.
Traditionally, the academic route to research is via the PhD, thus ensuring that the researcher acquires the appropriate knowledge and expertise. When this is not the case, whether through necessity or circumstance, it is difficult for those with the potential for research to know where to begin. This session will explore the issues involved in establishing a research culture in an academic department with no research tradition, and working with emerging researchers. By emerging researchers I mean those who are new to, or are interested in pursuing, research, but who have no prior experience: in this case, academics who have substantial subject knowledge and are experienced teachers. Many of them are planning to undertake a doctorate in the near future, but in the meantime, they need support and guidance. In approaching the project I faced two major challenges: firstly, encouraging a research ethos in a community with little confidence in its capacity for research; and secondly, developing a programme of researcher development appropriate for this naive audience. I will consider the nature of these challenges, how I responded to them, and the design of an associated development programme. Discussion will focus on future planning and the difficulties still to be overcome.
Over the years the nature of provision for PhD researchers has changed radically. The original apprentice model was first supplemented by research training, with a focus on research methodology and practice, which itself has been supplanted by a more generic researcher development model, driven by skills acquisition. Research expectations have also changed: collaborative research is encouraged, particularly if interdisciplinary. As the notion of impact becomes established, research increasingly involves collaboration with external organisations. Research has not only become more outward facing, but has also had to deal with complex funding issues.
This shift in emphasis has involved different, and very advanced, skill sets. It is assumed that established researchers, by the nature of what they do, will have developed these attributes, and for many this is the case. For those involved in doctoral education, however, it highlights the wide range of abilities new researchers must seek to develop, especially since the PhD is no longer seen solely as the route to an academic career. To address the changing needs of doctoral education, the academy has focused on a top-down, skills development model, which identifies skill sets and breaks these down into specific skills to be acquired, using tools such as the Researcher Development Framework.
This paper’s title derives from a conversation in Pride and Prejudice, in which Mr Darcy states that he only knows six truly accomplished women; following the enumeration of all the skills they must possess, Elizabeth Bennet wonders at his knowing any. The challenge for doctoral education today is similar: how to support doctoral students to develop the vast range of skills and abilities they will need in their future careers. I will explore various approaches to addressing these issues, including the relative roles of supervisor and researcher developers, and with reference to innovations in my own institution, will consider an alternative model that focuses on learning by doing.
and where the user is standing detached from the experience. This perspective undervalues experiencing the landscape as a whole and contrasts with our proposal to provide insights on perceiving and sensing it in the course of active engagement, such as walking through, bringing a self-perspective and an interpretative construction of the experience as a participant.
This work aims to investigate how people perceive and interact with urban nature, examining the emotional responses to designed landscapes, involving user based narratives, and to explore links between places and individuals, memories and attachment.
For research purposes two case study areas have been established, one in Portugal and another in the UK, on the basis that they are both designed landscapes with a certain range
of different environments and well established user/visitor groups. Participants were selected from everyday users and landscape architects and invited to engage in a set of environment encounters based on self-narrated walks and reflective diaries during a period of 6-9 months encompassing at least two contrasting seasons. This approach allowed obtaining user complex personal descriptions, meanings and understandings into how the places were experienced.
Research identified the unique aspects of place attachment and memory retrieval that accompanies self-narrated walking involving the movement from everyday places to special
places. Participants demonstrated that walking on their own allowed them to transcend and explore their “self-world”, to uncover unique feelings, emotions and moments. These are drawn from their memories, the mental and physical reinterpretation and reconstruction of past experiences and spaces. The interactions involved were revealed by the individuals narrations and demonstrated a profound sense of personal renewal involving a closeness with “nature”, reinforcing a sense of the self.
Findings emphasized the importance of memory in the ways that individuals interact with the landscape prompted by the immediacy of the moment that they occur and further our
understanding of the restorative qualities of urban nature. Additionally, personal narratives exploring emotional responses of individuals to designed landscapes can contribute to landscape architecture research by challenging the design of such places and new ways of engagement.
Over the last year, I have worked with a small group of staff, piloting a range of methods and approaches, and gaining insight into their motivation and learning. Given that one of our biggest challenges has been one of staff engagement, the project has adopted a participatory action research model, which has been shown to address issues of engagement (Foth and Brynskov, 2016). Based on evaluation of these methods, together with feedback from participants, we have established an ERLab, a space where emerging researchers can experiment with their own burgeoning practice and we can explore more systematically the effectiveness of this strategy. The programme will foster a community of practice approach (Wilson, 2014), and involves a mix of formal teaching, practical research activity and mentoring. The emphasis will be on experiential learning (Kolb, 1984), potentially involving staff in existing research projects (Costello and Shaw, 2013) where appropriate.
The paper will reflect on previous experience, consider this in the light of its theoretical underpinning, and will discuss the challenges and possible solutions of the coming year.
COSTELLO, R. & SHAW, N. 2013. The Development of a Blended Learning Experience to Enable a Personalised Learning Approach to Researcher Development for Research Students. The International Journal of Learnng in Higher Education, 19, 75-82.
FOTH, M. & BRYNSKOV, M. 2016. Participatory action research for civic engagement. In: GORDON, E. & MIHAILIDIS, P. (eds.) Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
KOLB, D. A. 1984. Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall.
MCCORMACK, J., PROPPER, C. & SMITH, S. 2014. Herding Cats? Management and University Performance. The Economic Journal, 124, F534-F564.
WILSON, M. 2014. Discipline Problems and the Ethos of Research. In: WILSON, M. & VAN RUITEN, S. (eds.) Handbook for Artistic Research Education. Amsterdam: ELIA.