Lauren Alex O'Hagan

About Lauren Alex O'Hagan

Professional Biography
Dr Lauren Alex O'Hagan is a Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Örebro University, as well as a Research Associate in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies at the Open University. She previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Örebro University (Communication of 'Good' Foods and Healthy Lifestyles project), the University of Sheffield (Drones in Visual Culture project) and Cardiff University (Reading, Writing and... Rebellion project). She holds a PhD in Language and Communication (Cardiff University), MA in Applied Linguistics (Cardiff University) and BA Hons in Modern Language Studies (Open University), as well as professional qualifications in Spanish, Italian, French, Teaching English as a Foreign Language and Archive Management.

Lauren is an experienced historical sociolinguist with extensive knowledge in the practical applications of visual analysis techniques, specialising particularly in visual social semiotics and multimodal critical discourse analysis. Her work largely concerns late nineteenth/early twentieth century material culture, social class and identity, with past projects exploring book inscriptions, propaganda postcards and food advertisements from this perspective. Her current research 'Selling Healthy Lifestyles with Science: A Transhistorical Study of Food and Drink Marketing in the UK and Sweden' is concerned with how science has been used historically in food marketing to convince consumers that products are ‘healthy’.  Lauren also has a growing interest in music memorabilia and (online) fandoms, and is the co-creator and co-writer of the Rewriting Rory blog, which focuses on the last ten years in the career of Irish blues musician Rory Gallagher. 

Lauren serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Victorian Culture and is an Associate Fellow of both the Higher Education Academy and Royal Historical Society. She is also a member of the following research groups and associations: FoodKom, Cosmetic Makeup and History Study Network, Edwardian Culture Network, British Association for Victorian Studies and International Visual Sociology Association.

Lauren recently won two awards at the 2022 Emerald Literati Awards: Outstanding Paper ("Commercialising public health during the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic in Britain") and Outstanding Reviewer (for Journal of Historical Research in Marketing). In 2021, she won the Outstanding Postdoc Award at the University of Sheffield.

She is passionate about interdisciplinary research and its real-life applications; her own work is strongly informed by her professional experience as an antiquarian bookshop manager, archive assistant and translator.

Research Interests
Lauren's research can be broadly split into four main strands:

1. Book inscriptions and performances of social class/power mediation: She has investigated how different class groups in the late 19th/early 20th century used book inscriptions to contest or perpetuate their class identities by using language, image, colour, typography, texture and materiality. An important aspect of this research has been unlocking the 'hidden histories' of working-class and lower-middle-class individuals who have typically been left out of official records of the Edwardian era.
 
2. Food advertising/packaging and public health communication: She has explored how food companies can circumvent legislation on food packaging and advertising by using semiotic resources to promote supposedly healthy eating discourses and convince consumers that a product is “healthy”. She has also investigated how marketers shape public understanding of science by drawing upon the meaning potentials of language and other semiotic resources.
 
3. Postcards and propaganda: She has a keen interest in the historical use of postcards to promote and spread political propaganda in a palatable format to the general public. Her research interests lie particularly in the women’s suffrage movement and the Irish fight for Home Rule in the early 20th century.
 
4. Music memorabilia, memories and identities: More recently, her attention has turned to music memorabilia, particularly battle jackets and tour t-shirts, and how they are used by fans to signal individual and collective identity. She is also interested in (online) fandoms, participatory culture and media representations of musicians, and has explored this in relation to Rory Gallagher, Phil Lynott and Tom Petty.

Teaching and Supervision
Although Lauren’s current role does not involve teaching or supervision responsibilities, she has previous experience in these areas within university and college settings. She has taught Sociolinguistics at undergraduate and postgraduate level (Cardiff University), and English as a Foreign Language in the community with international students, migrants and refugees (Cardiff and Vale College). She has supervised MA students in Strategic Communication (Örebro University, Sweden) and research assistants on her Reading, Writing and Rebellion project (Cardiff University).

Impact and Engagement
Some of Lauren's impact and engagement work includes:

Collaborations

- Collaboration with Actively Learn –  a free online education platform –  to provide an easy-access version of her research on St Patrick’s Day and nationalism in Edwardian Ireland that can be used by secondary school and college pupils

- Collaboration with Futurum –  a free online magazine aimed at introducing 14-19-year-olds to the world of work in STEM and SHAPE – to translate her research into free educational resources that can be used in the classroom or at home

- Collaboration with Heavy Metal Therapy to produce a blog post about her own personal mental health experiences and music, and also helped develop resources about the link between battle jackets and mental health

Exhibitions and Events

- Creation of 10 digital Museum in a Box collections based on her research to facilitate long-distance learning on social history and visual studies

- Development and curation of a digital exhibition 'Views from the Blue'  which uses drone photography as a means of encouraging viewers to reflect on how drones have created new ways of visualising our world

- Development and curation of a digital exhibition ‘Prize Books and Politics: Rethinking Working-Class Life in Edwardian Britain’, which used images of book inscriptions to tell the stories of working-class individuals.

- Stall at Family History Show offering expert advice to the general public about how to use book inscriptions to research their family history. 

Interviews/Keynotes/Podcasts

 - Development of a 20-minute podcast about her research for the DarntonWatch podcast series

- Invited keynote speaker at Lancaster University Literacy Research Centre (2021) and University of Leicester History and Politics Postgraduate Conference (2020)

- Radio interview with BBC Berkshire (2020) regarding her research on the pineapple as a status symbol

Publications
- 49 peer-reviewed publications (1 monograph, 1 edited volume, 5 book chapters and 42 journal articles)
- 12 general interest articles on her research for The Conversation, Discover Your - Ancestors and Wales Arts Review, amongst others
- 42 blog posts on her research for Cardiff University Special Collections, Edwardian Culture Network and British Association for Victorian Studies, amongst others

Click here for an up-to-date list of all her publications.