Nicola Shaughnessy
Biographic Data
| ID | 6462625 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicola Shaughnessy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicola |
| FAMILY NAME | Shaughnessy |
| SIGNATURE | SHAUGHNESSY N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kent |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9555-9987 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Backstage Participation: Mess and Muddle in Youth-Focused, Arts-Based Mental Health Research
This paper introduces two methodological innovations designed to enhance the transparency, ethics, and creative rigor of youth-focused participatory research in mental health. First, we conceptualize ‘Invisible Ink’ as a metaphor for latent participant knowledge—insights rooted in lived experience that remain hidden without specific relational and analytic scaffolds. Second, we model ‘Backstage Cafés as emergent, informal third spaces where young…
Exploring similarities and differences in how researchers and young people understand key terms in youth mental-health research
A lack of a shared understanding of key terms is acknowledged as a significant barrier to interdisciplinary research. This paper examines the ways in which a broadly interdisciplinary team of academics and youth co-researchers involved in mental health research interpreted a number of research and mental health terms that are central to their work in order to understand conceptual differences in how different stakeholder groups approach these ter…
Touch and the Lived Experience of Autism: A Commentary on Boldsen’s Contribution to a Paradigm Shift
Sofie Boldsen’s (2025) article, “Layers of the Skin: Three Perspectives on Tactile Sensation in Autism,” makes a vital contribution to a growing movement in autism research: the centring of autistic lived experience as an essential epistemic resource. Her work exemplifies the “corrective potential” of integrating autistic narratives into scientific discourse, pushing the field beyond reductive frameworks and toward a genuinely interdisciplinary u…
Lives of Shakespearian Actors, Part I, Volume 1: David Garrick, Charles Macklin and Margaret Woffington by Their Contemporaries
Practitioner Review: Effectiveness and mechanisms of change in participatory arts‐based programmes for promoting youth mental health and well‐being – a systematic review
Learning with labyrinths: Neurodivergent journeying towards new concepts of care and creative pedagogy through participatory community autism research
This paper arises from a UK research project, Playing A/Part, which explores the identities and experiences of autistic girls through creative practices and the implications for pedagogy. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project was an interdisciplinary collaboration using mixed-measures and a creative and participatory approach to co-produce new knowledge about this under-represented group. The research engaged 77 girls, a…
Ethical issues in participatory arts methods for young people with adverse childhood experiences
Stronger together: Learning from an interdisciplinary dementia, arts and well-being network (DA&WN)
Background This paper reports on the learning from a 12-month interdisciplinary project (Dementia, Arts and Wellbeing Network- DA&WN) and its activities. These featured a series of four workshops on dance, visual art, theatre and music. The network was comprised of clinicians, academics, creative practitioners and people with lived experience of dementia and their carers. Methods The workshops were designed to draw out tacit knowledge about well-…
Material voices: Intermediality and autism
Autism continues to be regarded enigmatically; a community that is difficult to access due to perceived disruptions of interpersonal connectedness. Through detailed observations of two children participating in the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project ‘Imagining Autism: Drama, Performance and Intermediality as Interventions for Autistic Spectrum Conditions’ (2011–2014), we demonstrate how ‘intermediality’ unlocked some of the many …
Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being
This book explores new developments in the dialogues between science and theatre and offers an introduction to a fast-expanding area of research and practice. The cognitive revolution in the humanities is creating new insights into the audience experience, performance processes and training. Scientists are collaborating with artists to investigate how our brains and bodies engage with performance to create new understanding of perception, emotion…
Imagining Otherwise: Autism, Neuroaesthetics and Contemporary Performance
Perspectives on the phenomenology of the autistic experience are presented with particular reference to the imagination in autism and what may be conceptualized as ‘neurodivergent aesthetics’. Drawing upon a research project that explored the potential of drama as an ‘intervention’ in autism, an attempt is made to de-mythologize the condition by challenging stereotypes and by suggesting that the multimodalities of performance offer an appropriate…
Truths and lies: Exploring the ethics of performance applications
This paper examines the ethics of the contract between the performer and client group in applied theatre practice. The paper examines the problematics of the conventional drama framework as a fictional space of pretence. What are the ethics of activities carried out in a context of disbelief? How can the contradictions between the agreement to ‘pretend’ and the encounter with real lives be addressed? The work featured is undertaken within a self-…
Learning with labyrinths: Neurodivergent journeying towards new concepts of care and creative pedagogy through participatory community autism research
This paper arises from a UK research project, Playing A/Part, which explores the identities and experiences of autistic girls through creative practices and the implications for pedagogy. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project was an interdisciplinary collaboration using mixed-measures and a creative and participatory approach to co-produce new knowledge about this under-represented group. The research engaged 77 girls, a…
Truths and lies: Exploring the ethics of performance applications
This paper examines the ethics of the contract between the performer and client group in applied theatre practice. The paper examines the problematics of the conventional drama framework as a fictional space of pretence. What are the ethics of activities carried out in a context of disbelief? How can the contradictions between the agreement to ‘pretend’ and the encounter with real lives be addressed? The work featured is undertaken within a self-…
Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being
This book explores new developments in the dialogues between science and theatre and offers an introduction to a fast-expanding area of research and practice. The cognitive revolution in the humanities is creating new insights into the audience experience, performance processes and training. Scientists are collaborating with artists to investigate how our brains and bodies engage with performance to create new understanding of perception, emotion…
Imagining Otherwise: Autism, Neuroaesthetics and Contemporary Performance
Perspectives on the phenomenology of the autistic experience are presented with particular reference to the imagination in autism and what may be conceptualized as ‘neurodivergent aesthetics’. Drawing upon a research project that explored the potential of drama as an ‘intervention’ in autism, an attempt is made to de-mythologize the condition by challenging stereotypes and by suggesting that the multimodalities of performance offer an appropriate…
Material voices: Intermediality and autism
Autism continues to be regarded enigmatically; a community that is difficult to access due to perceived disruptions of interpersonal connectedness. Through detailed observations of two children participating in the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project ‘Imagining Autism: Drama, Performance and Intermediality as Interventions for Autistic Spectrum Conditions’ (2011–2014), we demonstrate how ‘intermediality’ unlocked some of the many …
Stronger together: Learning from an interdisciplinary dementia, arts and well-being network (DA&WN)
Background This paper reports on the learning from a 12-month interdisciplinary project (Dementia, Arts and Wellbeing Network- DA&WN) and its activities. These featured a series of four workshops on dance, visual art, theatre and music. The network was comprised of clinicians, academics, creative practitioners and people with lived experience of dementia and their carers. Methods The workshops were designed to draw out tacit knowledge about well-…
Ethical issues in participatory arts methods for young people with adverse childhood experiences
Learning with labyrinths: Neurodivergent journeying towards new concepts of care and creative pedagogy through participatory community autism research
This paper arises from a UK research project, Playing A/Part, which explores the identities and experiences of autistic girls through creative practices and the implications for pedagogy. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project was an interdisciplinary collaboration using mixed-measures and a creative and participatory approach to co-produce new knowledge about this under-represented group. The research engaged 77 girls, a…
Practitioner Review: Effectiveness and mechanisms of change in participatory arts‐based programmes for promoting youth mental health and well‐being – a systematic review
Lives of Shakespearian Actors, Part I, Volume 1: David Garrick, Charles Macklin and Margaret Woffington by Their Contemporaries
Exploring similarities and differences in how researchers and young people understand key terms in youth mental-health research
A lack of a shared understanding of key terms is acknowledged as a significant barrier to interdisciplinary research. This paper examines the ways in which a broadly interdisciplinary team of academics and youth co-researchers involved in mental health research interpreted a number of research and mental health terms that are central to their work in order to understand conceptual differences in how different stakeholder groups approach these ter…
Touch and the Lived Experience of Autism: A Commentary on Boldsen’s Contribution to a Paradigm Shift
Sofie Boldsen’s (2025) article, “Layers of the Skin: Three Perspectives on Tactile Sensation in Autism,” makes a vital contribution to a growing movement in autism research: the centring of autistic lived experience as an essential epistemic resource. Her work exemplifies the “corrective potential” of integrating autistic narratives into scientific discourse, pushing the field beyond reductive frameworks and toward a genuinely interdisciplinary u…
Backstage Participation: Mess and Muddle in Youth-Focused, Arts-Based Mental Health Research
This paper introduces two methodological innovations designed to enhance the transparency, ethics, and creative rigor of youth-focused participatory research in mental health. First, we conceptualize ‘Invisible Ink’ as a metaphor for latent participant knowledge—insights rooted in lived experience that remain hidden without specific relational and analytic scaffolds. Second, we model ‘Backstage Cafés as emergent, informal third spaces where young…
Psychology (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Visual arts (6 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Autism (4 works) · Citizen journalism (4 works) · Drama (4 works) · Participatory action research (4 works) · The arts (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works)