Contact details
- Email janice.ross@stir.ac.uk
About me
About me
Dr. Janice K. Ross M.A., M. Sc., M. Res graduated from Glasgow University in 1991 and spent the next 20 years researching and working in education, teaching adn writing on institutional inequality and discriminatory practice. In 2009, she became actively involved in the Third Sector on the island of Barra via the radio station, Siar FM. Barra Island Discs, an hour long chat show recorded the life stories of the islanders. By 2014, fifteen percent of the island’s indigenous adult population had shared their story with a global internet radio audience, attracting a fan base of the island’s diaspora in Canada. In 2016 'Voices Galore', the first book in Scotland on community radio was published. It contained the composite of 30 lifestory interviews.
She successfully evaluated her experience in a doctoral research project which centred on how life stories can be applied methodologically to reflect the construction of modernity's social processes.
Her 2021 'Not Miss Whitlawburn' is a community narrative, an oral history of the life stories of those who grew up in the last council housing scheme to be built in Cambuslang, Lanarkshire. Erected before Thatcherism tore through the industrial heartland of Scotland, it presents how a community defines its cultural identity. https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/in-your-area/lanarkshire/memories-cambuslang-life-inspire-new-24746740
During Covid, employed by Happy Education Hub to teach refugee children the art of origami using English language.
Founder member of Cambuslang Chess Club.
Event / Presentation
Theatre Nemo Lifestory Project
Funded by Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, I was awarded a six-month artist in residence/ internship with Theatre Nemo, a group working to improve the mental health of those affected by prison. The resulted in the successful exhibition and theatre production of orally collected lifestories of a prison community. The juxtaposition of the stories from employees and ex offenders affected positive cultural change.
Research
My research interests emerge from my corpus of life story narratives. As a form of oral history they construct a meaningful and effective interpretation of culture. An ethnographic self-reflexive, critical discourse shows how spoken language can be passed through a conceptual triangulation of community, identity and tradition. Rooted analytically in the methodologies of anthropology, sociology and literary theory, the construction of my argument investigates the symbolic inter-connectedness between language, social structures and their processes to show how culture is embedded in the everyday lived experience.
Teaching
Teaching
PGCE Jordanhill College English and Modern Studies. 18 years teaching experience at secondary and tertiary level. Origami for wellness courses and for fun at Happy Educational Hub. Member of British Origami Society.