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Staff Profile

Dr Helen Underhill

Research Associate

Background

Introduction

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate within the UKRI GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub at Newcastle University, investigating socio-cultural values of water using collaborative and creative research methods.

I have an interdisciplinary background in Anthropology and Fine Art practice (from printmaking and installation work, to facilitating immersive Live Art workshop experiences, conveying complex ethnographic research findings to broad, non-specialist audiences using creative methods) and a broad skillset in terms of regional and thematic expertise (covering education, migration, gender and visual expression across the Middle East and Gulf countries).

My doctoral research combined visual and material anthropology with the anthropology of development to provide the first in-depth, ethnographic examination of higher education in contemporary visual art in Palestine; a milieu heavily inflected by NGO funding and circuits of international capital and influence found within the international art world. In doing so, it critically examined the process of socialization of artists through NGO-sponsored education in Ramallah.  

I have previously taught courses in Social Anthropology (theory and methods), and Fine Art (life drawing), and am currently working towards becoming an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Authority.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Anthropology & Sociology, SOAS, University of London (2018) 'Art school, art world, art circuit: an ethnography of contemporary visual art education and production in two Palestinian locations' 
  • MA (dist.) in Anthropology of Media, SOAS, University of London (2012)
  • BA (hons) in Fine Art, Falmouth University (2009)

Interests

Having lived on a narrowboat since 2016, I am interested in alternative/off-grid living, and spend a good deal of time reading, thinking and writing about dwelling on water.  I am also fond of cycle touring and terriers.
Research

Research Interests

My current research interests synthesize aspects of my doctoral research (in terms of individual creativity, ‘resistance’ practices and relationships to state or institutional power within aid and development discourses) with concerns with water, dwelling practices and attitudes to ecological impact at both individual and societal levels. As a resident on a roving narrowboat on the UK’s inland waterways for the past four years, I have become engaged in research and writing that engages attitudes to water as key to understanding how we live now, and how we might live in a near future shaped by anthropocentric climate change, and increasing water security challenges.


Current Research

UKRI GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub (Led by Richard Dawson, Newcastle University). This trans-disciplinary hub tackles intractable challenges of water security and addresses the Sustainable Development Goals. The Water Hub has worldwide reach through collaboratories in India, Malaysia, Ethiopia and Colombia to increase dialogue. I work within Work Stream 4 on Valuing Water, working with colleagues and partners across all the collaboratories of the hub to consider the multiple ways that water is viewed and interacted with, and investigating how the ways that water is valued affect approaches to water security. More information: https://www.watersecurityhub.org/

Within the Water Security Hub, I lead the Research Methods for Global Challenges project (https://www.watersecurityhub.org/rmgc/about) promoting more-than-disciplinary Arts, Humanities and Social Science methods.

I am currently working with boat dwellers on the UK inland waterways, addressing the provision (or lack) of services such as potable water, and investigating how water access interacts with the politics of itinerant informal dwelling in the UK.  This project involves a collaborative map of water and sanitation services - https://waterdweller.com/

Previous Projects

From 2019-2020 I was a Postdoctoral Research Assistant to the British Academy funded Making Home Away project at the University of Reading, project managing the creation of an accessible digital humanities archive of Syrian refugee stories.

Prior to this, between 2017 and 2019 I supported Dr Caroline Osella on an ethnographic research project based at SOAS, part of the REALM portfolio hosted at Columbia University & NYU Abu Dhabi, reflecting on the experiences of Malayali Gulf migrants, and investigating the intersection of gender, race, class and migration. Within this project I helped to develop ‘Do You Belong Here?’ an immersive Live Art workshop experience, conveying complex ethnographic research findings to broad, non-specialist audiences using creative methods (with Dr Caroline Osella & Lady Helena Vortex). 

Doctoral research (2014-2018) - ethnography of a contemporary visual art school in Ramallah, West Bank, and its wider integration within the Palestinian art scene.



Teaching

Postgraduate Teaching

Contributor

  • TCP8025 Linked Research Project
  • TCP3099 Dissertation mentor (Undergraduate)
 
Publications