Rachael Flynn

Rachael is involved in academic delivery across a range of inter-disciplinary areas including contemporary arts practice, moving image, performance, female and gender-based studies and creative research methods, at the University of the West of Scotland.

Her inter-disciplinary PhD was funded through a scholarship from the Scottish Centre for Island Studies. Her research to date has taken an interdisciplinary approach to the study of diaspora and migration, and with particular focus on familial accounts and patterns of movement between Ireland and the West Coast of Scotland. Identifying conceptual understandings of diasporic identity, work has explored the ways in which performative cultural practices can be understood as that which allows for the release of emotional histories, informing and deepening wider understandings of how these legacies of departure and ‘of landscapes lost’ remain palpable.

Methodologically, her work has involved interdisciplinary approaches (Narrative Inquiry, Autoethnography, Bibliographic Review, Practice-based Research and Heuristic Inquiry) to explore the ways in which her identification with particular diasporic cultures and communities finds performance and testimonial expression through her work as an artist. Being and belonging, through individual and collective understandings, is explored, critiqued and defined through the cyclical processes involved with it’s very navigation.

Rachael received an undergraduate degree in Sculpture from the School of Fine Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, University of Dundee and went on to be awarded her MA from Goldsmiths, University of London.

During her time studying she received various opportunities from The Scottish Sculpture Workshop Residency programme, Hunting Art Prize, a Bath Centre for Contemporary Writing bursary, and a Carnegie Scholarship. Whilst studying in London, she was selected to receive mentorship from BAFTA Lifetime Achievement winner 2008, Paul Watson. This led to her working on projects with Wendy Ramshaw CBE and Professor of Jewellery at the Royal College of Art, David Watkins, amongst others.