In her work, Rasa applies qualitative research methods, with particular expertise in the Baltic region as well as Central and Eastern Europe. She is passionate about enhancing the quality of policymaking through various collaborative, innovative, and evidence-informed practices – an interest that extends beyond research to practical application. She is a member of the advisory group on the Open Government Partnership, established by the Office of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, and has several years of experience in policy consultancy, including collaborations with organisations such as the European Commission and the OECD.

While the first focuses on the examination of interest organisations' influence on public policy, the second explores the way in which contemporary governments have opened to public scrutiny through open data and other tools. Michele is also an affiliated scholar at the Good Lobby.

She has produced research on oral history, mother and baby institutions, abortion, and the legal reform of reproductive rights in the UK. Her fellowship examines Northern Irish women’s experiences of unmarried pregnancy, including gestation, labour, motherhood, mother and baby homes, postnatal care, abortion, adoption, and miscarriage. This project will utilise oral history to analyse women’s experiences of unmarried pregnancy itself, as well as the long-lasting effects of the stigma and trauma that often followed. 

Her current research focuses on contemporary archival practices of collecting and managing photographs of Troubles-era Northern Ireland. 

Alongside her work as an academic, she is also the Founder and Director of the Photography Ethics Centre. In this role, she previously held an ESRC-funded Practitioner Appointment at the QUB Centre for Creative Ethnography during which she conducted research about how professional photographers think about and practice ethics.

She has research interests in feminist-pragmatism, theories of emotion/affect, embodiment and shame, institutionalisation and containment, Irish feminisms, and gender and austerity. She has published widely in her interdisciplinary research area, including in journals such as Hypatia, Signs, and Feminist Review. 

Her current research is on gender, emotion, and public policy, with a focus on “women and the politics of crisis.” 

View full profile Dr Clara Fischer

It investigates the role of recordings in forming and shaping public space, and questions the relationship between archiving sound and organising society.

She was doing a PhD project on Turkish diaspora engagement policy and the Turkish minority in Bulgaria and obtained a PhD in Political Science in 2018. During the project "Knowledge exchange and academic cultures in the humanities. Europe and the Black Sea Region" (Horizon2020), she researched the correlation between knowledge and power and its reflection in migration flows and political developments in the Black Sea Region. During the fellowship at the National Academy of Science of Azerbayjan (2019) the focus of the research was on Turkish nationalism and Turkey’s kin-state policy. A more recent research interests include the relations between kin states and kin minorities in Eastern Europe, particularly the mechanisms of engagement and mobilization of external populations by their kin states. 

The project is underpinned by partnership with the Centre for the Study of Historic Houses and Estates at the University of Maynooth, Irish Museums Association, National Museums NI and Northern Ireland Museums Council. 

View full profile Dr Briony Widdis