Dr Lauren Alex O'Hagan

Professional Biography

Dr Lauren Alex O'Hagan is a Research Fellow in the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University and an Affiliated Researcher in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Örebro University.

Lauren is an experienced sociolinguist who specialises in the study of objects of visual and material culture through the lens of visual social semiotics and multimodal critical discourse analysis. Her research covers diverse media forms and historical periods, focusing particularly on contexts in the UK, Ireland and Sweden.

Despite the diversity of subjects and settings, her work is united by three core objectives:

- Tracing the cultural biographies and material assemblages of everyday objects, with a particular focus on their sociocultural forms and functions, as well as acts of semiotic remediation by their owners

- Challenging assumptions about the ‘novelty’ of contemporary communicative practices by situating them within more extensive lineages of practice and identifying (dis)continuities in their uses, purposes and meaning potentials

- Reassessing how identities, particularly around social class and Irishness, are constructed and stereotyped through material and visual discourse, and how such identities are shaped by ideological and political forces

These objectives underpin Lauren’s commitment to reappraising the lives and legacies of individuals and communities—often those overlooked or misrepresented—by exposing the historical rationale behind their depictions and showing how multimodal resources legitimise certain narratives over others.

Her research has explored a wide range of artefacts, including:  book inscriptions, food advertisements, political postcards and posters, pigeon photography, drone photography, hardtack biscuits, dip pens, battle jackets, music memorabilia, public monuments and plaques, sheet music covers, greeting cards, school exercise books, birthday books and book bindings/covers.

A major strand of Lauren’s recent work centres on the life, legacy and cultural reception of Irish blues-rock musician Rory Gallagher. Her research has examined the material, semiotic and affective dimensions of Gallagher’s artistic footprint, ranging from fan keepsakes and digital communities to media portrayals and commemorative landscapes. Central to this is a reappraisal of Gallagher’s later years through Rewriting Rory, a widely respected blog she curates that challenges reductive portrayals of his final decade, offering a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of his life and work during this period.

In line with its emphasis on the social practices, processes and people involved in the production or reception of objects of visual/material culture, Lauren’s research often pushes the boundaries of traditional multimodal analysis through its co-application with archival research (multimodal ethnohistory), object-oriented interviews (multimodal ethnography) and autoethnography (multimodal autoethnography). This interdisciplinary approach facilitates a transhistorical perspective that identifies antecedents in the communicative histories of individuals and communities that shape a text’s creation.

Current Research Projects

Music Memorabilia as Cultural Biography (2024-present)

Launched in September 2024, this project adopts a multimodal ethnographic approach to investigate the ‘social lives’ of music memorabilia. The first phase focused on items personally gifted to fans during encounters with Rory Gallagher, examining their meanings, connections, cultural/historical significance and how their value changed over time, especially after his death. The second phase investigated the embodiment, affective attachment and cultural labour involved in Gallagher scrapbooks created by a Belfast teenager between 1970 and 1973. The upcoming third phase will explore last year’s Rory Gallagher Collection auction, engaging with fans who purchased his instruments to understand the meanings these items hold for them.

This study builds on insights from a 2021 project that examined the social lives of battle jackets—sleeveless denim jackets adorned with band patches, a hallmark of heavy metal fan culture.

Rewriting Rory (2021-present)

The Rewriting Rory project fosters a reappraisal of the final decade in the career of Irish blues musician Rory Gallagher (1948-1995), using unexplored archival materials and fresh interviews with those who knew him to challenge the typical ‘rise and fall’ narrative that continues to be perpetuated in stories of his life. It seeks to outline the many musical highpoints and accomplishments that Gallagher continued to strive for, despite numerous personal and professional setbacks, and correct the assumption that his decline in health translated into a decline in musicianship. Rory Gallagher: The Later Years, based on this research, was published with WP Wymer in October 2024.

Marketing Healthy Lifestyles with Science (2018-present)

This project, co-led with Prof. Göran Eriksson of Örebro University, historicises contemporary trends by examining the long relationship between science, marketing and the promotion of healthy lifestyles. Initially focused on food and drink marketing, it explores how scientific discourse and ideas about health and nutrition were conveyed through nineteenth- and early twentieth-century advertisements, including the ‘spaces of confusion’ where products blurred the lines between food and medicine. In doing so, it reveals connections between past and present strategies whereby manufacturers leverage scientific innovations to develop or rebrand products and use science to support health claims. The project has since expanded to include cosmetics and make-up marketing. In September 2024, Lauren and Göran published an edited volume, Food Marketing and Selling Healthy Lifestyles with Science: Transhistorical Perspectives (Routledge). The current phase investigates scientifically marketed health technologies, including digital wellness apps and vitamin patches.

Past Research Projects

Class, Culture and Conflict in the Edwardian Book Inscription (2015-2018)  

Lauren’s doctoral research put forward a unique ethnohistorical approach to multimodality to investigate how book inscriptions contribute to our understanding of class conflict in Edwardian Britain. It found that Edwardians of all classes realised the potential of the spaces in books to objectify their economic means and cultural necessities, and assert themselves in a social space, whether to uphold their rank or keep their distance from other groups. The study also considered class-based trends in writing implements, book bindings, publishers’ marketing materials and reading practices. Lauren published a monograph The Sociocultural Functions of Edwardian Book Inscriptions: Taking a Multimodal Ethnohistorical Approach with Routledge in 2022.

Reading, Writing and… Rebellion in the Edwardian Working-Class Book Inscription (2018-2020)

Building upon this work, Lauren’s postdoctoral research focused specifically on Edwardian working-class book inscriptions and how they offered an opportunity to demonstrate their recent intellectual emancipation by recording political messages and/or defacing books awarded as prizes, as well as to develop unique communicative practices (e.g. the in memoriam inscription). She concluded that working-class book inscriptions have a high cultural value, as they act as important primary resources for understanding self-presentation, social conflict and class tension in early twentieth-century Britain. When combined with archival evidence, they unravel personal narratives that offer new accounts of history that stand in contrast to official narratives of national institutions of power.

As part of this project, Lauren also explored other vernacular literacy practices, including school exercise books, birthday books and greetings cards, and produced the edited volume Rebellious Writing: Contesting Marginalisation in Edwardian Britain, published with Peter Lang in 2021.

The Semiotic Remediation of Hardtack Biscuits (2023-2024)

Further developing the study of inscriptive practices, Lauren examined how hardtack biscuits – a staple army ration – were remediatised in creative ways by World War One soldiers. Using a combination of multimodal analysis and archival research, it identified five key acts of semiotic remediation by soldiers—declarations of ownership, letters, diary entries, photo frames and objets d’arts—which showcase hardtacks as unique, unmediated resources for understanding World War One experiences. It also noted the frequent use of humour as a coping mechanism, as well as the important memorialisation function of hardtacks, acquiring symbolic values disproportionate to their everyday value for bereaved families.

Materialising the Irish Home Rule and Independence Movements (2020, 2024)

This project explored the campaigns for Irish Home Rule and independence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through political postcards and sheet music covers. It was specifically concerned with portrayals of Nationalism and Unionism and the ideologies and messages promoted by their iconography, as well as how images and symbols were semiotically remediated in the US to project a transnational Irish-American identity. It found that many of the tropes we consider today as part of an inherent Northern Irish/Irish identity can be found in these artefacts, yet they were often used in haphazard ways that failed to reflect the lack of political consensus across the island and even forecasted some of the troubles to come.

Lauren also extended this work to another core political issue in Edwardian Britain – the campaign for women’s suffrage – by conducting a small-scale study on anti-suffrage postcards. She also applied a similar approach to the 1922 Swedish prohibition referendum.

Drones in Visual Culture (2020-2021)

This project aimed to understand whether and how the use of drone technology in society is changing the way people see the world and visual culture more broadly, as well as to extend and innovate current theoretical approaches to visual mobile communication. It was particularly concerned with the aesthetic characteristics of drone visuals, how drone visuals circulate and public perception of drone visuals. As part of the project, Lauren ‘transhistoricised’ the drone by emphasising its similarities to early twentieth-century pigeon photography, thereby arguing for a more nuanced perspective into the relationship between ‘new’ and ‘old’ media.

Teaching Interests

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).

Lauren regularly produces content for the Open University's OpenLearn platform. A full list of her OpenLearn resources can be found here.

In 2024, Lauren helped establish the WELS Impact Community of Practice. She is responsible for producing its quarterly newsletters and organising its quarterly events. 

Impact and Engagement

In line with Lauren's research interests and objectives, she seeks to disseminate her work in ways that disrupt traditional academic conventions and spaces, breaking down power dynamics and fostering more democratic sites of discussion and debate around the lives of the working classes, food marketing practices and the importance of music to mental wellbeing. To this end, Lauren has shared her work with stakeholders in the form of: digital and physical exhibitions, Museum in a Box, podcasts, interactive workshops, blog posts, poetry, animations, posters and curriculum resources.

Awards

• Winner of 2023 Cobh Readers and Writers International Poetry Competition: "Immortality"
• Outstanding Paper, 2022 Emerald Literati Awards: "Commercialising Public Health During the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu Pandemic in Britain"
• Outstanding Reviewer, 2022 Emerald Literati Awards: Journal of Historical Research in Marketing
• 2021 Outstanding Postdoc Award, University of Sheffield

Collaborations and Connections (selected)

• The Rory Gallagher Estate: Assisted in sourcing and researching archival materials from Gallagher's 1990 UK tour for the All Around Man: Live in London (2023) release (credited in album’s liner notes); supported preparations for Cork Rocks for Rory Festival (2025); developed Gallagher’s Wikipedia page
• Heavy Metal Therapy: Produced blog posts sharing personal mental health experiences related to music and helped develop resources about the link between battle jackets and mental health
• Actively Learn: Created an accessible version of her research on St Patrick’s Day and nationalism in Edwardian Ireland for use by secondary school and college pupils
• Futurum: Translated her research on drones in visual culture into free educational resources that can be used by 14-19-year-olds interested in  STEM and SHAPE careers

Exhibitions and Events (selected)

• Cork Rocks for Rory: Assisted with text preparation for the ‘Early Years’ exhibition at Cork City Hall; research referenced at two stations on city’s permanent walking trail
• Museum in a Box: Creation of 10 digital collections based on her book inscription research to facilitate long-distance learning on social history and visual studies
• Views from the Blue Digital Exhibition: Development and curation of a digital exhibition, which uses drone photography as a means of encouraging viewers to reflect on how drones have created new ways of visualising our world
• Prize Books and Politics Digital Exhibition: Development and curation of a digital exhibition, which used images of book inscriptions to tell the stories of working-class individuals.
• Family History Show: Ran a stall offering expert advice to the general public about how to use book inscriptions to research their family history. 

Interviews/Keynotes/Podcasts (selected)

• Invited Keynote Speaker: most recently at DN29: Visiolinguistics (2023), Lancaster University Literacy Research Centre (2021) and University of Leicester History and Politics Postgraduate Conference (2020)
• Darton Watch Podcast: Developed and hosted a 20-minute episode on her book inscription research
• BBC Berkshire Radio Interview: Discussed her research on the pineapple as a status symbol

Funding (selected)

• Open University Research Development Funding (2023): Research trip to Sweden in support of forthcoming edited volume on food marketing
• Open University Research Development Funding (2023): Scoping activities for a project on the material culture of menstruation
• Cardiff University Innovation Fund (2020): Purchase of Museum in a Box and support activities
• ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (2019-2020): "‘Reading, Writing… and Rebellion: Understanding Literacies and Class Conflict Through the Edwardian Book Inscription

Academic Memberships

Lauren is an Associate Fellow of both the Higher Education Academy and Royal Historical Society. She is a member of several research groups and associations, including:

• Edwardian Culture Network (since 2015)
• British Association for Victorian Studies (since 2018)
• FoodKom (since 2019)
• Cosmetic Makeup and History Study Network (since 2022)
• Digital Correspondence Community Interest Group (2023)
• Discourse Net (2023)

She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Victorian Culture and has acted as peer reviewer for journals such as Visual Communication, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Food, Culture and Society, History of Retailing and Consumption, Rock Music Studies and Popular Music and Society. She has also provided consultancy to the BBC, Heavy Metal Therapy, Sur in English, Echo Magazine, Sprudge and bookplate clubs in the UK and Australia.

International Collaborations

Since 2018, Lauren has been an Affiliated Researcher at Örebro University in Sweden. She works closely with colleagues in the Department of Media and Communication Studies and is involved in several collaborative research projects in the area of critical discourse studies.