What’s your job title and how long have you been at Loughborough?

I’m a Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Creative Futures, Loughborough University London, and I’ve been here since 2019.

Tell us what a typical day in your job looks like?

A typical day involves a lot of multi-tasking! I’m involved in two research projects at the moment – Para Sport Against Stigma, and Un/Making Communication and Social Change, plus working on grant applications for new projects, so there is a lot of communication with my collaborators asssociated with those. I’m also Prorgamme Director for three masters programmes (MA Communication, Media and Development; MA International Development; and MSc International Sustainable Development) which keeps me busy. And in between I try my best to carve out quiet time to make progress on my forthcoming book, ‘Communication and Development in a Capitalist World’.

What’s your favourite project you’ve worked on?

Unfair question – they are all my favorite! If I had to choose, it would probably have to be the Un/Making Communication and Social Change project. In that project I used creative and participatory methods and had a lot of freedom for methodological innovation. I worked with some amazing partner NGOs in Malawi and India., and we experimented with ‘reverse engineering a recipe’ to analyse algorithmic power of social media, ‘making metaphors’ workshops where participants made 3D models of concepts which offered incredibly powerful critiques of power and agency in international development, poetry workshops, and even had a theatre performance of a play that was banned when it was first performed in Malawi in 1988. So that has been a really joyous, rewarding and exciting project.

What is your proudest moment at Loughborough?

Anytime we see impact from projects I feel immense pride and a huge sense of reward. The Para Sport Against Stigma has seen huge impact driven by so many people – including an increase in the number and depth and quality of national media stories and features about para sport in Malawi, a first ever corporate sponsor of the Malawi National Paralympic Committee, and contributions to the new National Disability Policy in Malawi on using para sport for disability rights awareness. From the Un/Making CSC project, it was seeing some of the national newspapers cover our conference (which included the theatre performance of the banned play) with double page spreads, which to me showed that the research project really was contributing to a nationally important debate on localization of development.

Tell us something you do outside of work that we might not know about?

I’m an avid swimmer – I’m part of my local Masters Swimming Club (in fact, I’m currently the Chair of the Club!), and I love doing long-distance, open water swims. I recently did the One Day Scilly Swim Challenge, which involved about 6km of walking and 12km of swimming between islands of Scilly.

What is your favourite quote?

“There is no tomorrow without a project, without a dream, without utopia, without hope, without creative work, and work toward the development of possibilities, which can make the concretization of that tomorrow viable.” Paulo Freire

If you would like to feature in ‘5 Minutes With’, or you work with someone who you think would be great to include, please email Lilia Boukikova at L.Boukikova@lboro.ac.uk