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 from the theoretical perspective of visual social semiotics and the methodological framework of multimodal critical discourse analysis. While her research encompasses different historical periods, geographical settings and subjects, it is united by the following three objectives that have run throughout all her work to date:

- Tracing the cultural biographies of everyday objects and investigating their sociocultural forms and functions, as well as acts of semiotic remediation by their owners

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

- Fostering new understandings of identity construction and stereotyping, particularly in terms of social class and Irishness, and the ideological values, power relations and political orientations that shape such meanings in discourse

These three objectives have the broader aim of reappraising the life of a particular person/group of people or event, addressing misconceptions or biases in their depiction to date and establishing the historical rationale behind this depiction and how language and other semiotic resources (e.g. image, colour, typography, layout, composition) work together to ‘legitimise’ it.

Some of the artefacts that Lauren’s research has explored are: 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.

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 stretches 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 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)

This project, launched in September 2024, uses a multimodal ethnographic approach to explore the ‘social lives’ of music memorabilia given directly to fans during encounters with their favourite musicians and how the meanings of such memorabilia might change and become wrapped in new significance once the musician dies. Using a case study of the Rory Gallagher online fan community, it specifically aims to understand:

- The functions and meanings of such memorabilia to fans
- The memorabilia’s entangled relationships with people, other objects and places (i.e., their embodied material networks)
- The memorabilia’s broader historical and sociocultural significance
- The evolution of the memorabilia’s value and meaning trajectory over time:       
(a) since originally receiving the artefact; and          
(b) since the musician in question has died.

The study builds upon the findings of a 2021 project concerned with the social lives of battle jackets – a sleeveless denim jacket customised with band patches that is a staple item of clothing for heavy metal fans.

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.

Lauren’s other research on Gallagher has investigated the influence of crime fiction on Gallagher’s songwriting; sites of memorialisation and remembrance in the public space; depictions in the international music press throughout Gallagher’s career; and constructions of Irishness in Gallagher documentaries and the online fan community.

Lauren has previously explored similar themes of identity construction in the lyrics of Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott and US singer/songwriter Tom Petty.

Food Marketing and Selling Healthy Lifestyles with Science (2021-present)

This project, co-led with Prof. Göran Eriksson of Örebro University, seeks to historicise our understanding of contemporary trends by studying the long relationship between science, food and drink marketing and the promotion of healthy lifestyles. Specifically, it considers how scientific discourse and ideas about health and nutrition are channelled through nineteenth and early twentieth-century food advertisements, as well as the ‘spaces of confusion’ posed by certain product’s liminality between food and medicine. In doing so, it uncovers links between past and present ways that manufacturers have capitalised upon scientific innovations to create new products or rebrand existing products and employed science to make claims about health and nutrition. This study builds on their previous project on discourses of ‘healthy’ eating in food marketing (2018-2021).

In September 2024, Lauren and Göran published an edited volume Food Marketing and Selling Healthy Lifestyles with Science: Transhistorical Perspectives with Routledge. The next stage of their project will explore the study of ‘scientifically proven’ health technologies and apps, as well as the use of science in cosmetic advertising.

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.

Together with Prof. Jane Seale, Lauren established the WELS Impact Community of Practice and is responsible for producing quarterly newsletters and arranging quarterly meetings. Lauren also currently helps convene the Open University's Language, Literature and Politics (LLP) Research Group, which brings together researchers investigating the relationship between language, literature (literary criticism and creative writing) and politics in the widest variety of contexts.

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 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: Helped source and research archival items from Gallagher's 1990 UK tour for the All Around Man: Live in London (2023) release (credit in album's liner notes)
• Heavy Metal Therapy: Produced blog posts about her own personal mental health experiences and music, and helped develop resources about the link between battle jackets and mental health
• Actively Learn: Provided 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
• Futurum: Translated her research on drones in visual culture into free educational resources that can be used by 14-19-year-olds interested in working in STEM and SHAPE

Exhibitions and Events (selected)

• 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

External Collaborations

Lauren is an Associate Fellow of both the Higher Education Academy and Royal Historical Society. She currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Victorian Culture and has served as peer reviewer for: Visual Communication, Gender and Language, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Rock Music Studies, Popular Music and Society and Social Sciences, amongst other journals. She has also offered consultancy to the BBC, Heavy Metal Therapy, Sur in English, Echo Magazine, Sprudge and bookplate clubs in the UK and Australia.

She is currently a member of the following research groups and associations:

• 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)
• Health Communication Special Interest Group (2023)

In 2021, she served as co-director of the Digital Society Network at the University of Sheffield.

As a member of FoodKom, Lauren frequently collaborates with researchers in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Örebro University. To date, she has written three papers with Prof. Göran Eriksson on the marketing of radium-based products (Science Communication), cod liver oil (Food and Foodways) and the cough drop Läkerol (Social History of Medicine) in early twentieth-century Sweden. They are currently working on an edited volume to be published with Routledge in summer 2024. Through her work with FoodKom, Lauren has also collaborated with Dr Lame Maatla Kenalemang-Palm on a project exploring NIVEA sunscreen advertisements and Prof. Leif Runefelt on a project exploring quack medicines, including cannabis-infused food products and Phospho-Energon.

Away from FoodKom, Lauren has also collaborated with Dr Elisa Serafinelli (University of Sheffield) on papers related to their Drones in Visual Culture project and Dr Tereza Spilioti (Cardiff University) on a paper relating to her Reading, Writing and... Rebellion project.

Lauren is also a frequent writer for Heavy Metal Therapy - a CIC set up to bring together people who find rock/metal helpful for mental wellbeing.

Through her work with Rewriting Rory, Lauren has also contributed to the Cowper and Newton Museum's #AG250 project and the Cobh Readers and Writers Festival.

International Links

As an Affiliated Researcher of Örebro University, Lauren has ongoing research links with academics in the University's Department of Media and Communication Studies and is engaged in various collaborative research projects in the area of food communication (see above for more details).