Miss Elizabeth Ascroft

Professional biography

My research explores co-creative approaches with young people to develop sexuality education materials in Aruba, the Caribbean. I’m interested in studying ways of knowing and following an anticolonial approach to dominant forms of sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) knowledge within the international development sector. My research considers how creative dialogic spaces influence knowledge production, whilst reflecting on concepts of participation, power and affect. The research is a hive of dynamic and playful workshops, including storytelling, model making, crafting and zine making. 

I am guided by post-humanist philosophy and new materialist theory, and am motivated by understanding the affective potentials of the materials we use in our research methods. As a researcher, I take great pleasure in slow learning with a group, to critically reflect on how we generate knowledge and the assumptions underlying it. 

As a facilitator, I am guided by pedagogies of compassion and an ethos of care. And, I love to laugh!

Background: I have 10 years of experience working in the SRHR and youth sectors. Before starting this PhD, I was the global technical gender and SRHR manager at Girl Effect, where I supported their adolescent girl facing programmes in the Eastern and Southern African region. During my Erasmus joint Master’s degree in Global Education Policy for Development, I specialised in comprehensive sexuality education (CSE). I partnered with the sexuality education programme provider Dance4Life to investigate the challenges young people face in accessing SRHR services and disclosing cases of gender violence in Barbados. I have since published an article in the Journal of Visual Studies exploring the application of Photovoice methods in my research.

Research interests

Research as activism; creative methods; co-creation; participatory action research; decolonising methodologies; transformation and praxis-based research; critical pedagogies; sexuality education; youth participation; rights-based approaches; SRHR as activism and resistance; storytelling; island studies; normative discourses around gender and sexuality in the Caribbean.

External collaborations

My PhD research project is funded through the ESRC Grand Union Doctoral Training Programme and is a collaborative studentship with International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and Open University. I am working in partnership with the Family Planning Association (FPA) of Aruba.