Papers by Caroline Lenette
Objective To use the digital story completion method to prompt participants to describe thoughts,... more Objective To use the digital story completion method to prompt participants to describe thoughts, fears and mental health experiences in response to a story stem about COVID-19, to capture a specific sociohistoric moment. Design We used digital story completion, a qualitative research method, to gather narratives from Australians coping with physical distancing and social restriction measures. Our reflexive thematic analysis of the data was underpinned by a constructionist approach to reflect the importance of social context in understanding health experiences. Setting Australia. Participants 52 people living in Australia (aged 18 years and over). Results Four meta-themes were prevalent across 52 stories submitted: (1) expressions of mental distress linked to COVID-19; (2) various coping strategies offered by characters in stories; (3) narratives outlining social support offered to alleviate distress; and (4) specialised COVID-19 vocabulary. Conclusion We cautiously propose that points of convergence across stories indicate a level of shared experience among participants relating to COVID-19 in Australia. We suggest this is due to intensive media coverage of the pandemic, persistent public health messaging, engagement with social media and instant messaging technologies, and extended lockdowns that impacted the mental health of vast numbers of Australians.
Advances in social work, 2012
The Qualitative Report, 2017
Digital storytelling refers to a 2 to 5 minute audio-visual clip combining photographs, voice-ove... more Digital storytelling refers to a 2 to 5 minute audio-visual clip combining photographs, voice-over narration, and other audio (Lambert, 2009) originally applied for community development, artistic and therapeutic purposes, and more recently adapted as an arts-based research method. To date, no systematic review of the use of digital storytelling in a research capacity, to generate information about a phenomenon has been conducted. Accordingly, our aim was to provide a systematic review of digital storytelling in research. The review identified 25 articles representing 23 discrete studies that met inclusion criteria. A thematic analysis of results indicated that digital storytelling in research was especially appropriate for use with marginalised groups, and was most commonly used in this context. There was some variation in the extent to which digital storytelling in research adhered to the principles with which it was originally developed. Surprisingly, although digital storytellin...
The Qualitative Report, 2018
Visual representations can contribute to shaping how the general public perceives and engages wit... more Visual representations can contribute to shaping how the general public perceives and engages with issues of forced migration. In 2015, thousands of Rohingya became stranded in the Bay of Bengal when smugglers abandoned them on unseaworthy boats and regional governments refused their disembarkation. Their ordeal made headlines across the globe and photographs documenting the crisis were widely disseminated. This paper applies visual-social semiotics to four of these photographs from an Agence France-Presse public exhibition. Our analysis suggests that the features in the photographs transcend the conventional “threat versus victim” dualism that typically characterizes such representations, to capture both the suffering and agency of the people at the centre of the crisis. This occurs in two ways: first, the Rohingya are depicted as proactive and enacting agency, and not just as powerless people in need of rescue. Second, the juxtaposition of mundane aspects with more dramatic frames...
The literature on the social and emotional wellbeing of community musicians who engage with margi... more The literature on the social and emotional wellbeing of community musicians who engage with marginalised groups with complex mental health issues such as refugees, is relatively scarce. The Scattered People is a collective of volunteer musicians, music facilitators, and community development workers who engage, through musical activities, with asylum seekers and refugees who have experienced detention in Australia. This discussion focuses on key examples of social and emotional distress for community music facilitators through their interactions with asylum seekers. The community musicians explained the circumstances that had significant impacts on their wellbeing in terms of (i) their engagement with people in a detention centre, and (ii) the happiness and concerns linked to the asylum seekers they came across. Our paper presents the second author's reflections on two songs from the Scattered People repertoire, which were created and performed as the embodiment of these social ...
Arts-Based Methods in Refugee Research
Australian Social Work, Dec 1, 2011
Article usage statistics combine cumulative total PDF downloads and full-text HTML views from pub... more Article usage statistics combine cumulative total PDF downloads and full-text HTML views from publication date (but no earlier than 25 Jun 2011, launch date of this website) to 15 Feb 2013. Article views are only counted from this site. Although these data are updated every 24 hours, there may be a 48-hour delay before the most recent numbers are available.
Arts-Based Methods in Refugee Research
The term ‘arts-based research’ encompasses a range of different methods of inquiry for interpreta... more The term ‘arts-based research’ encompasses a range of different methods of inquiry for interpretation, meaning-making, and representation of lived experiences. The approach involves the use of any art form, at any point in the research process, to generate, interpret, or communicate new knowledge. In this chapter, I outline what arts-based methods are and their value to social science research. I provide key examples to highlight the range of possibilities afforded by arts-based research in refugee studies. This diversity can be at the source of resistance to recognise the legitimacy of arts-based approaches and their potential as new ways of knowing.
To demonstrate the health and well-being benefits of facilitated arts engagement with women veter... more To demonstrate the health and well-being benefits of facilitated arts engagement with women veterans, we draw on a key practice-based example from the Australian National Veterans Arts Museum (ANVAM), an organization with expertise in collaborative art-making with veterans. We outline ANVAM’s framework and the processes art therapists use to create facilitated art exhibitions. We discuss how veterans’ involvement with art-making has therapeutic benefits, can contribute new knowledge on health and well-being, and convey nuances of gender-specific experiences. We briefly outline the trend in evidence from academic literature on arts-health research with veterans and the sparse creative research with women veterans to highlight the potential of art-based methods in veteran health and well-being research, given growing numbers and the expanding roles of women in defence. Arts-health research using diverse methods has yielded promising results in this field. As such, interdisciplinary, c...
Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies
The Qualitative Report
Digital storytelling refers to a 2 to 5 minute audio-visual clip combining photographs, voice-ove... more Digital storytelling refers to a 2 to 5 minute audio-visual clip combining photographs, voice-over narration, and other audio (Lambert, 2009) originally applied for community development, artistic and therapeutic purposes, and more recently adapted as an arts-based research method. To date, no systematic review of the use of digital storytelling in a research capacity, to generate information about a phenomenon has been conducted. Accordingly, our aim was to provide a systematic review of digital storytelling in research. The review identified 25 articles representing 23 discrete studies that met inclusion criteria. A thematic analysis of results indicated that digital storytelling in research was especially appropriate for use with marginalised groups, and was most commonly used in this context. There was some variation in the extent to which digital storytelling in research adhered to the principles with which it was originally developed. Surprisingly, although digital storytellin...
Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal
Participatory video involves co-researchers using digital or video cameras to create their own vi... more Participatory video involves co-researchers using digital or video cameras to create their own videos and present issues according to their sense of what is important. In 2018, the authors—including three co-researchers from refugee backgrounds—collaborated through participatory video research to document views on better access and participation in higher education. Here, we reflect on key ethical issues encountered and share lessons learnt from our project. Our aim is not to discredit this methodology but to contribute new discussions on how participatory video can be used effectively as a form of self-representation to target wide audiences and effect social and policy change. This way, debates on the social and political potentialities of arts-based methods such as participatory video can be expanded. Since deploying participatory video in forced migration research is a relatively novel approach, there is much scope to expand the contours of knowledge on its potential to reach di...
INYI Journal
Young people’s narratives can often be reduced to mere ‘illustrative’ purposes when reporting res... more Young people’s narratives can often be reduced to mere ‘illustrative’ purposes when reporting research findings. As a result, contributions can lose their richness and yield decontextualized accounts in discussions on integration. This article highlights how using narrative ‘threads’ (Lumsden, 2013; Spence, 1983) to convey a refugee young woman’s story can value her contributions more fully, and offer contextual insights that might otherwise be missed. Her narrative emerged from a qualitative study where six refugee young people were interviewed about their experiences of international advocacy in Switzerland in 2016. Young people’s inter-woven narrative threads can better inform meaningful youth integration initiatives.
Transcultural Psychiatry
The mental health of women has been largely neglected in the refugee literature, notwithstanding ... more The mental health of women has been largely neglected in the refugee literature, notwithstanding the specific gender-related issues that confront women seeking asylum. Furthermore, a specific category of women, deemed to be women-at-risk, face particular challenges in their journey and resettlement process. This longitudinal study investigated psychological distress in refugee women-at-risk one year after resettlement in Australia. Follow-up survey of 83 women-at-risk (mean age = 33.41 years; SD = 11.93) assessed: trauma events and symptoms; loss events and loss distress; level of post-migration problems; anxiety, depression, and somatic symptoms; and absence of trust in community members. Participants demonstrated no symptom change since initial assessment ( p > .05). Substantial proportions of women reported traumatization (39%), PTSD (20%), anxiety (32%), and depression (39%) above clinical cut-offs, and high levels of somatization and loss distress. Post-migration problems, t...
Arts-Based Methods in Refugee Research
Australian Journal of Human Rights
Media Practice and Education
Digital storytelling is a valuable and ethical research tool to engage in collaborative research ... more Digital storytelling is a valuable and ethical research tool to engage in collaborative research with refugee women. This paper recounts how digital storytelling was used in a mixedmethods study on settlement, to document the journeys of women who entered Australia through the Woman at Risk program in 2014-2015. Instead of merely asking a series of questions, the digital storytelling process extended our qualitative inquiry as an approach that valued the women's own memories, interests, and hopes. The methodology represents a meaningful way of engaging in collaborative research, where participating women were not just storytellers but valued as active co-constructors of new knowledge. We outline each of three digital narratives as a 'whole' to consider what we can learn from a storytelling process where women with complex circumstances are privileged as protagonists-and-producers of their own stories. We argue that it is worth critically reflecting on the concepts the women propose for themselves as meaningful ways to articulate their lives, when we relinquish the researcher role as question asker to enter a space alongside participants and listen intently. Our paper highlights the broader potential of digital storytelling particularly in mental health research in collaboration with refugee participants.
Journal of immigrant and minority health, Jan 21, 2018
Refugee women-at-risk represent a distinct and vulnerable refugee population. We investigated the... more Refugee women-at-risk represent a distinct and vulnerable refugee population. We investigated the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Loss Scale (MLS) with 104 women-at-risk, recently-arrived in Australia. Cross-sectional survey included: the MLS (indexing loss events and loss distress); Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (Indexing Trauma Events and Trauma Symptoms), and; Hopkins Symptom Checklist-37 (indexing anxiety, depression, and somatization symptoms). Exploratory factor analyses of MLS loss distress revealed a six-factor model (loss of symbolic self; loss of home; loss of interdependence; loss of past aspirations; interpersonal loss, and; loss of intrapersonal integrity). Cronbach alphas indicated satisfactory internal consistency for loss events (0.83) and distress (0.88). Correlations supported convergent validity of loss distress with trauma symptoms (r = 0.41) and divergent validity with anxiety (r = 0.09), Depression (r = 0.29), and somatic (r = 0.24) symptoms. Fin...
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Papers by Caroline Lenette