Mr Isaac Fravashi

Isaac Fravashi is a doctoral researcher in the Department of English at the University of Southampton. His PhD thesis examines collage procedures are employed in literature to resist and renegotiate conventional critical assumptions about authorship and the author’s role in meaning.

Isaac’s research engages with experimental writing, visual culture, and critical theories of authorship, with particular attention to how collage and collage-like procedures were employed in twentieth century literature and art. His own experimental writing includes public artwork ‘MOVE PAST THIS’ commissioned by ‘a space arts’ and hybrid writing ‘Reaching After’ published in Fruit Journal.

Beyond his doctoral research, Isaac has applied his expertise to fieldwork. In partnership with the Southampton Institute of Arts and Humanities (SIAH), as part of the AHRC-funded project Feeling Towns, he developed a series of workshops that employed collage poetry as a creative methodology to facilitate public consultation. Working with local government stakeholders across Hampshire, Dorset, and the Isle of Wight Isaac has facilitated workshops for upwards of a hundred participants in total, spanning multiple demographics. The findings of the workshops contributed to policy decisions of each local government stakeholder, and Isaac has discussed his work with creative methodologies on the Public Policy Podcast and in blog posts for And Towns and University English. In recognition of his work, Isaac received the Doctoral College Director’s Award for Public Engagement and Outreach.

Developing on his experience with creative methodologies, Isaac contributed to the EMERGE EU project with his work on the multi-media initiative Tidelines. Isaac took on a facilitating role in the project that aimed to engage young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, in addressing climate change and marine pollution. Honing his skills in ethnography, he observed and recorded on a series of workshops in the Mansbridge Heritage Project, a collaboration between SIAH and Abri Housing Association that examined the role heritage plays in building a sense of place in social housing communities. As a result he co-authored a creative toolkit for community workers, housing teams, and neighbourhood volunteers.

During his time as a doctoral researcher, Isaac has also developed a repertoire of more traditional research skills. He supported sociologist Dr Bindi Shah by constructing a literature review that examined social adaptations to climate change; partnered with Professor John Boswell in the Department of Politics to code and examine an oral history of library workers in England which resulted in an imminent co-authored paper on the library’s changing role as a community hub in England; and he worked with the Centre for Modern and Contemporary Writing to produce a white-space analysis of critical publications in the fields of contemporary art and literature.

Isaac is a qualified HE teacher, holding an Associate Fellowship from Advance HE. He has delivered lectures on the English Dissertation and Poetic Language undergraduate modules, and acted as seminar leader for full semesters of the modules Poetic Language and Literary Transformations. Isaac has also taught on Speech Acts and the MA module Literature, Publishing, and New Media.