Staff Profile - Zephyrine Barbarachild
Research Associate
Zephyrine Barbarachild
Degree
- BA (Hons), Spanish and German, Swansea, 1976
- MA Women's Studies, Lancaster, 2004
- MA English Literary Research and Creative Writing (Distinction), Lancaster, 2006
First a lexicographer, then a crofter, Zephyrine practised in the 1980s as a medical herbalist and macrobiotic nutritional advisor. In 1987, newly retrained in horticulture, she became a founder member of a community-based business training learning-disabled young adults in horticulture and management skills. She ran her own garden design and maintenance business from 1991. Her work portfolio now includes data-collection and interviewing for colleagues, and academic proof-reading.
Other Interests
Current research interests stem from her work as an Independent Prison Monitor: juvenile deaths in custody, youth custody diversity issues, learning disabilities, and prisoners' mental health. She is also writing about mermaids as liminal beings.
She spoke at the George Ewart Evans Storytelling Centre Annual Symposium (May 2009), University of Glamorgan, about Twentieth-century women's lives unfolded, and will contribute in 2010 to an evaluation of an innovative storytelling project, introducing IT to Welsh Valleys' communities, the Communities 2.0 project, Storyworks: Cardiff and its Hinterland.
Keywords: health, narratives, women's narratives, storytelling.
Projects
Zephyrine's first Health Research work explored the legacies of the 1970s Community Development Project in West Cumbria (2005 -6). She then collected stories and experiences for the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority's End-of-Life Storytelling Project with Bridges Support Service, Birmingham (2006 -7). She worked as a Research Assistant for the Department of Ethnicity and Health, UCLAN, Preston on the Northwest Strategic Health Authority Consultative Review on Mental Health (2007). In 2008 she spent 8 months interviewing hospice day-care cancer patients for a collaborative project with Liverpool University, Emotional Well-being in Cancer Patients. In 2009 Zephyrine visited six Lancashire and Cumbria prisons and 4 hospices to assess the quality of end of life care for people in custody, and hospice support links: Dying behind bars: A regional evaluation of end of life care in prisons in the North West of England (Cancer Network). Her next investigation is into why families use - or prefer not to use - a children's hospice (2010).
Journal Articles
Turner M, Kidd H, Payne S, Barbarachild Z(2009) Commentary; Dying prisoners: How notorious do they need to be to receive high quality end of life care? International Journal of Palliative Nursing 15(10):
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Books
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Book Chapters
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Reports
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