ISCHP has been kindly granted permission by Katie Bevans-Wright to re-post a piece of writing posted on July 16th 2017 after Katie attended this year’s ISCHP conference in Loughborough, UK. The original article can be found at https://drkatiewright-bevans.com/2017/07/16/sun-strawberries-and-social-representations-theory-ischp-2017/.
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This week I attended my second International Society of Critical Health Psychology Conference – a good time for a first blog post!
It had been four years since my last ISCHP. Back then I was in the early days of my PhD research and the Bradford conference opened my eyes to a world of passionate critical health psychologists. I was very much looking forward to Loughborough 2017 and it certainly didn’t disappoint. From arriving on a sunny Sunday afternoon to a reception of bangers and mash, and strawberries and cream, to the final (and very inspirational) keynote on the Wednesday by Dave Harper the whole 3 days were just fantastic. Unlike many other conferences where I feel very much on the margins as a critical social psychologist, I feel at home at ISCHP. My impression of ISCHP is that it is a critical space through and through, embracing scholars from many different theoretical and methodologically orientations and addressing a HUGE range of social and health concerns. There appears to be an understanding across the board that the most popular way of doing things is not necessarily the best or most effective one.
Scanning through the conference programme was not a case of locating where ‘my kind of talks’ were on and when but instead (refreshingly) having to face tricky decisions about what to attend and what to miss out on. Two of this events themes (‘diversity and inclusivity’ and ‘ageing’) summed up much of my research and interests, adding to dilemmas over which talks to attend. I thoroughly enjoyed talks on ageing and issues such as social inclusion, physical activity and sexual health. Many of the diversity and inclusivity talks touched upon the challenges of conducting good quality, ethical co-produced research with ‘disadvantaged’ or marginalised communities – these were most definitely relatable.
Presenting in one of two symposia on the theory of social representations was a personal highlight. For me this was an opportunity to position my work in the context of this fascinating and evolving theoretical framework. Between the two symposia, eight scholars (including colleagues at Keele: Michael Murray and Jenny Taylor) presented research on innovations in theory and methodology. It was inspiring to see SRT used to underpin novel methodologies such as film analysis and also to see people exploring different theoretical combinations to better understand social issues.
I came away from ISCHP 2017 feeling inspired, energised and motivated to crack on with the paper I’m currently working on! On top of that I met many friendly like-minded academics who I hope to cross paths with in the future. Already looking forward to ISCHP 2019!
Notes
1 Katie Wright-Bevans kindly gave permission for the picture to be republished on ISCHP’s website to accompany this blog post.
For more information about ISCHP 2017’s successful conference in the UK the reader may wish to see the ‘Past conferences’ page of this website.