Lisa Metherell

Dr Lisa Metherell is a Senior Lecturer and Research Degree Coordinator in Art and Design at Birmingham City University.  She co-leads the Art Activisms research cluster.

She is interested in the challenges of caring well in difficult times; the limitations of language for marginalised subjects and how art practice has the potential to create representational complexity.  Lisa's research is particularly informed by the tensions between queer theory and phenomenology and how what we 'know' might be usefully troubled by what we 'feel'. Other interests include fabulation, secret languages, kinship and vulnerability. She also writes about werewolves.

Lisa's current research explores how material explorations could enable representationally complex visual manifestations of developmental trauma in families.  Through an exploration of greenwood in particular (a signifier of strength, support and nature) and of pushing its material qualities to its limits, this research seeks to develop a material vocabulary that could express ambivalence, trauma and unspeakability within the context of failing support systems for families under pressure.