Dr Verusca Calabria

Role

Dr Verusca Calabria is an Associate Professor of Mental Health Histories in the department of Social Work, Care and Community, School of Social Sciences, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her research sits across the intersection of the social of history and heritage of mental healthcare. She specialises in the coproduction of mental health histories via participatory methodologies, namely oral history and participatory-action-research. Prior to joining academia, she worked as a community-based Oral Historian for 10 years.  She completed her PhD at Nottingham Trent University in 2020. She holds a Master of Arts in Life History Research from the University of Sussex and a first class Bachelor of Arts Honour degree in History and Cultural Studies from the University of Brighton. She has contributed to several international interdisciplinary volumes dealing with historical perspectives of mental health care. She co-convenes the cross-faculty oral history network seminar series at Nottingham Trent University with Chris Reynolds (NTU History).

Dr Calabria teaches on the following courses and modules:

• Person-centred Interventions module - BA Hons in Health and Social Care (module Leader)
• Young People and Social Care module - BA Hons in Health and Social Care (module Leader)
• Research module - BA Hons in Health and Social Care (guest lecturer)
• Social Policy - BA Hons in Health and Social Care (guest lecturer)
• Research module - MA in Social Work (guest lecturer)
• Working with Individuals, Groups and Families module, BA in Social Work (guest lecturer)
• Evidence in Nursing - BA in Nursing (guest lecturer)

Dr Calabria is happy to supervise dissertations in her areas of expertise, especially psychosocial approaches to mental healthcare, the social of history of psychiatry / mental healthcare and its heritage, as well as participatory methodologies, namely oral history and participatory-action-research.

Career overview

Between 2005 and 2015 Verusca worked as an Oral History and Heritage Consultant in partnership with community groups, arts and voluntary organisations to collect, preserve and disseminate the hidden histories of marginalised groups. She is a trustee of the Oral History Society, a national organisation which promotes best practices in the collection, preservation and dissemination of oral history.

Her doctoral research explored the changing dimension of care practices from the mental hospital to community care through the application of participatory action research as research design and oral history methodology as data collection. She engaged collaboratively with former patients and retired staff of the Nottingham mental hospitals to explore the transition from institutional to community care practices.

External activity

Member of the Management Committee of the European Health Histories COST Action and Chair of  the  Heritage and Public Engagement Working Group. Url: www.cost.eu/actions/CA22159/.

Co-convenor of NTU oral history network seminar series, which provides a forum for debate, supporting the exchange of knowledge and practice of oral history across NTU.

Member of the Transformative Welfare working group for the £500k Horizon Europe’s Networking Action Cost Slow Memory project.

Coordinator of the Oral History Society’s 2023 national conference on “collaborative oral histories’, held at Nottingham Trent University

Co-convenor of the special interest group ‘Psycho-Social Therapies and Care Environments’ (PST&CE), an open forum for Oral History Society members, to explore the intersections, divergences, and shared worlds of oral history, psycho-social therapies, and therapeutic and care environments.

Trustee of the Oral History Society, a national organisation promoting best practice in the collection and preservation of oral history. Url: www.ohs.org.uk.

Steering Committee member for the oral history project: Lily’s Legacy: The Radical History and Heritage of Liberal Judaism in Britain. Url: www.lilyslegacyproject.com.