Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
New Professor of Media at Leeds Beckett explores anti-ageing culture
Professor Raisborough joins Leeds Beckett from the University of Brighton, where she taught, and wrote about, the sociological aspects of the mass media for 12 years. Her most recent project, an exploration into anti-ageing culture, has resulted in a new film, Women and Ageing, which was a shortlisted finalist in the recent Women Over Fifty Film Festival.
Jayne commented: “I am very excited to be taking up the role of the team’s first research Professor. I am very proud to be working with a team who are not only dedicated to the student experience but who are heavily engaged in creative, theoretically rich and socially important research. I am looking forward to helping the team realise their research ambitions and helping in seeking new directions for our energies and skills.”
Professor Andrew Cooper, Dean of the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities, added: “We are delighted to welcome Jayne to Cultural Studies and Humanities, and are already benefitting from her expertise in the development of media-based activities that span disciplines within the School. Jayne adds to the leadership of Media Studies research; and plans for a one-day media communications festival for media scholars across the University are indicative of how she will drive development of research projects within and beyond the University.”
Professor Raisborough’s teaching and research interests range from feminism, social class and serious leisure, to gun ownership, designer vaginas, cosmetic surgery, ethical consumption and makeover television programming.
She explained: “Although these topics are diverse, they are all part of a wider investigation into what identities are made possible for us - in other words, just who are we allowed or encouraged to be, how we can take up these possibilities of being and the consequences of these on how we feel about ourselves and others. It is the relations of self and other that bring me to explore social inequalities, injustice and discrimination. Holding neoliberalism, and more recently the practices and rhetoric of austerity, to critical account is a necessary focus of my work.”
Jayne’s current project, funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF), examines anti-ageing culture. She explained: “My work offers both an analysis of media representations of ageing – particularly those that celebrate the denial, or ‘slowing down’, of visible signs of ageing, which I consider a form of poison - and an antidote to that poison.”
Jayne interviewed 60 women, aged between 40 and 101 years of age, about their experiences of ageing.
“What they said suggests that there’s a lot about age that we can celebrate, not hide or mask: women spoke about having more confidence, freedom from the male-gaze, ability to take risks, appreciating family and friends more and generally growing to like oneself. All of these women refused to be written off by the poison of anti-age. They refused to see signs of age as weakness: rather they embraced them for they were hard earned. The women were determined to enjoy life – and they wanted media representations that reflected their reality of age!”
Women And Ageing from Mark Bader on Vimeo.
Professor Raisborough commissioned a film to capture these themes. Women and Ageing was made by Mark Bader and produced by Dee Rudebeck.
Jayne is now co-writing a book called Women and Guns as well as researching representations of the NHS in newspapers with colleagues from the University of Brighton and University of Surrey.
She has written more than 20 journal articles and book chapters and co-edited the 2007 book Risk, Identities and the Everyday.
Jayne added: “Many people assume that they know what media scholars do; and while there is important work to be had in analysing media as texts for areas such as constructions of crime, identity, class, consumption, gender and political engagement, our work at Leeds Beckett is also examining fandom, celebrity, the historical aspects, and the political economy of media (it is after all, big business!). Our work is also addressing prejudice and stigma (for example racism in football) and researching and teaching those all-important skills of media literacy.
“Additionally, our research is extending into how we sense and feel spaces and places: this is important work because it explores how we engage with digital worlds through app design and how we engage with culture (the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for example), our green spaces, our gardens, our deindustrialised landscapes and our bodies as we move through those spaces. The complexities of identity, memory, nostalgia and wellbeing are central to this work.”