Lori Delaney
Email: l.delaney.1@research.gla.systa-s.com
Phone: 07956311026
Research title: Performing Breast Cancer Stories: Disrupting Narratives and Constructing Selves
Research summary
My practice-research uses performance to explore experiences of breast cancer. Since the 1980s, standardized breast cancer narratives of ‘courage’ and ‘survivorship’ have dominated public discourse, resisting anything other than positively transformative experiences. However, Breast Cancer diagnosis and treatment can be disruptive. Cancer patients' own accounts of the illness suggest the need to extend narratives, to acknowledge that disruptive stories serve a critical function in illuminating cancer experiences, with the potential to create new knowledge. The research will examine the potential of theatre to disrupt normative breast cancer discourse through representing the complexities of lived experience of the disease.
The research engages women with lived experience to co-create outputs that provide materials that benefit those living with, through and beyond breast cancer: raising awareness of disruptive narratives via autobiographical performance methods (testimony, witnessing, verbatim and documentary), the research will develop new, collaboratively devised theatre performance(s).
Supervisors
Grants
- AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership Scotland Studentship