Mel (now based at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge) was a postdoctoral researcher working on the CreativeDrought project. Mel is originally from France, but has lived in the UK since September 2007 when she came over to do an MA in conflict resolution at the University of Bradford. She stayed in Bradford to do a PhD that looked at the dynamics of individual and collective storytelling in a contested urban space. Mel started working as a postdoc at the University of Birmingham in September 2014 on an AHRC funded project called Stories of Change: exploring energy and community in the past, present and future. She was part of the Everyday Lives work package, which focused on the role of energy in communities in South Wales. During her 2 years in that role, the team did some fairly straightforward oral history interviews but also worked closely with creative practitioners and did some creative experiments on how to research energy in communities. One of those was a ‘pop up’ story studio – taking over a building that used to be a library for 2 weeks in the summer of 2015 and turned it into a space that was part exhibition and part interactive, which invited people’s stories about energy.

Mel worked on the CreativeDrought project with Sally Rangecroft, Anne Van Loon, and Rosie Day. She did narrative group interviews on the impact of drought and organised creative workshops to increase preparedness for future drought in a village in South Africa.

To contact Mel, please send her an email.

For more information about Mel’s research activities: