Professor Lynn Froggett

Lynn’s current role is mainly in research and research leadership. She also supervises post-graduate research students and teaches Psychosocial Studies. She has led numerous research programmes in the UK. Currently, she works on three Arts Council Creative People and Places programmes and has recently concluded two consecutive projects of Forum Theatre and Dance/Theatre in prisons and secure settings. A strong focus on arts sensitive methodological innovation over many years has resulted in a stream of publications on sensory and visual methodologies. Currently she is concerned to develop a psychosocial understanding of digital culture and technology. Internationally she has recently worked with the Curating Third Space Research Programme (University of New South Wales); She is consultant to the Qualitech Programme, University of Stavanger, Norway and has a longstanding association with the Centres for Social Entrepreneurship and Lifelong Learning at the University of Roskilde, Denmark.

Lynn Froggett has a cross-disciplinary academic background in the Social Sciences (Sociology and Social Policy) and Humanities (History and Philosophy). She also has a professional background in Social Work Management and Practice and she taught social work and social policy for several years after transferring from the practice field to UCLan in 1993. This has been the basis for her research and scholarship in Psychosocial Studies in which she has developed a distinctive trans-disciplinary approach involving the application of psychoanalytic and social theory to empirical research problems. Her monograph, Love, Hate and Welfare (Policy Press: 2002) laid the conceptual and theoretical basis for the application of psychosocial thinking to the policy arena. Her teaching, writing and research supervision reflects these interests. She established the Psychosocial Research Unit at UCLan in 2005 which she now co-directs with Professor Ali Roy. Its work has fallen into three main strands: socially engaged arts; citizenship and communities; public mental health and substance misuse. The theoretical and conceptual development from this body of work is cumulative rests on depth hermeneutic, ethnographic, biographical narrative and visual methodologies. Recent themes have been the relationship between personal or community transformation, the role of illusion and delusion in social change processes, the role of the aesthetic faculty in apprehending complex social phenomena, including in technological innovation. Externally to UCLan, Lynn has worked consistently to develop Psychosocial Studies and establish it as a sub-discipline. She edited the psychodynamically oriented Journal of Social Work Practice for twelve years; she was a founding and executive member of the International Research Group for Psychosocietal Analysis, following which she co-hosted the first conference of the UK Psychosocial Network. This eventually constituted itself as a Learned Society, gaining recognition of the Academy of Social Sciences. Lynn was conferred Fellow of the Academy in 2016 and is now Executive Chair of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and member of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies. Together with colleagues at UCLan Lynn has recently brought her experience of trans-disciplinarity and institution building to establishing the Lancashire Institute for Citizenship, Society and Change which works across schools to broker and support partnerships within the university and with external community groups, civil society agents and organisations.