Dr Lucy Stroud

Independent Scholar Fellow 2023

Re-imagining the Real Life magazine, teenage girls and melancholic communities

This project works with socially deprived teenage girls from Aberdeen to create a real life magazine. The pandemic hasdisproportionately aﬀected this demographic, who report high levels of poor mental wellbeing associated with increasing social media engagement (Crenna-Jennings, 2021). Adopting a psychosocial methodology, the project examines hidden dimensions of the lived experiences such as the eﬀects of social and economic inequality on the participant’s sense of self, community, and future aspirations. It will deploy a Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology with focus groups and workshops to explore the power of community-based creative media work to contain complex experience, while empowering participants to challenge media messages. Transferable journalism skills will be provided through workshops to facilitate the collective magazine-making project and bonding.

More information

Areas of interest

Psychosocial Studies Journalism Neoliberalism Media Studies Psychoanalysis

Cohort

ISF9

Biography

Dr Stroud’s PhD research at the University of Aberdeen focused on analysing Real Life magazines through a psychosocial lens, drawing on her extensive experience as a journalist working on national newspapers and Real Life magazines. Her research highlights the neoliberal agenda embedded in the production and consumption of Real Life magazines, examining their emotional and psychosocial impact on readers and the broader media environment. With her particular interest in socio-economic and political loss, she applies a psychosocial lens to her research to explore the psychical implications of loss and how it becomes inscribed in a particularly classed and gendered form of melancholia.

Since completing her PhD, Dr Stroud has been delighted to work for the Aberdeen cultural organisation Station House Media Unit (shmu), contributing to their work empowering people from lower socio economic backgrounds to take space in the media, make their voices heard and share their experiences authentically – work that helps challenge dominant conceptions of class and gender.

Dr Stroud is on the Executive Board of the Association of Psychosocial Studies and is a Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council.

Biographical details correct as of 14.01.25