Alida Payson

I am a lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies in JOMEC. My research interests are in everyday life, second-hand economies, and material culture. More widely, I am interested in the cultural politics of migration, gender, race, and disability, and in visual, creative and participatory research methods.

I have been working to build a network of second-hand studies researchers and practitioners. You can find more about our projects and activities on the Secondhand Cultures blog, available here: https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/secondhandcultures/

I recently finished a three-year project, Charity shop country: conviviality and survival in austerity Britain, funded by the Leverhulme Trust early career fellowship, and exploring how charity shops matter as sites of everyday living together and getting by in an austerity economy. Here is a recent blog post about the research - Thrift labours - Charity shops in the austerity economy

My thesis in cultural studies, also at JOMEC, entitled Feeling Together: Emotion, heritage, conviviality and politics in a changing city, follows three intergenerational groups of women and girls as they took part in arts and heritage projects to explore overlooked local women’s history in Butetown through writing, film, photography, and fashion. The thesis is framed by a critical history of Cardiff, as well as a critical interrogation of whiteness in UK heritage industries and theoretical debates on the politics of emotion. I argue for these intergenerational heritage projects as emotional performances full of important lessons on how to cope with inherited injustice and how to live together with others in the present.

I have published on the cultural politics of translation in film, emotion in migrant protest media, and the history of refugees in Wales. As part of formative interdisciplinary collaborations as a research assistant, I have also published on narratives of poverty in the media in Wales and Black and minority ethnic women’s experiences of infertility, as well as drawing as a participatory research method. Before moving to the UK and undertaking her PhD in cultural studies, I worked in the nonprofit sector in the United States on housing and food justice issues. Her academic background is in literature and the arts.