Dr Helen Foster
Wellcome Trust Early Career Research Fellow
School/Department: History Politics and International Relations, School of
Telephone: +44 (0)783 712 4296
Email: hlf8@leicester.ac.uk
Profile
I am also a writer-facilitator, teaching creative writing within adult learning and delivering writing for wellbeing workshops on a freelance basis. I edit the Lapidus Magazine for Lapidus International, an organisation which supports writing and wellbeing practice and am co-founder and secretary of The Oral History Society's Creative Oral History Special Interest Group.
Research
In 2020 I received a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant for 'The Silent Archive', a project collecting spoken testimonies about menopause. It brought together a new archival collection of narratives of lived experience through interview, facilitated conversations, personal audio diaries and creative writing. A creative strand developed in partnership with Writing East Midlands produced an anthology of poetry and prose called 'Women's Things'.
My current Wellcome Trust funded research explores the wellbeing potential of sharing life stories about and during midlife. It considers ways in which this can be a shared community practice and a private practice and draws on narrative theory and therapy, autoethnography and reminiscence practices as tools for wellbeing. Project outputs will include a framework for organisations to develop their own story sharing practices as wellbeing tools.
Publications
Foster, H. L. (2020) 'Menopause: A Collage of Meanings from Lived Experience' in L. Salisbury, S. Hinchliffe, L. Choksey, et al (eds.) The Index of Evidence. University of Exeter Wellcome Centre, online: https://www.indexofevidence.org/.
Foster, H. L. (2020) 'At the Intersection of Memory, History and Story: An Exploration of the Nostalgic Feeling which Arose when Listening to Oral History Archives as an Inspiration for Novel-Writing'. LIRIC Journal, 1(1): pp. 86-107.
Foster, H. L. (2018) 'Finding Poetry in the Sound Archives: Creatively Repurposing Oral Histories for Re-presentation and Engagement'. Oral History 46(1): pp.111-118.
As a writer of fiction, my creative work has been published in Mslexia magazine and presented at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Supervision
Teaching
I have also taught Drama and English in secondary schools and further education and continue to teach in adult and community learning. I hold Qualified Teacher Status (QTS).
Press and media
Activities
Editor, Lapidus Magazine, Lapidus International
Board Member, Lapidus International
Peer Reviewer, LIRIC Journal