Helen's research is focussed on resistance, which she has interpreted primarily through the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin. Her current research positions reading as a form of resistance as well as investigating the experiences writers and those working in public libraries and independent bookshops. She is interested in how bodily experience is expressed, particularly through metaphors, and has used ethnography and creative methods, including visual research, to understand this phenomenon. Her PhD focussed on the lived experience of unemployment from an embodied, phenomenological perspective. Key aspects of her research include stigma, social class, othering, masculinity, humour and resistance. Helen’s research interests arose from her previous career working in social housing and local government. She is also interested in creative pedagogy and has been programme lead of the University's undergraduate human resource management programmes for over 5 years.