Professor Jenny Kitzinger - BA (Cambridge), PhD (Glasgow)
Overview
Position:
Director of Research
Email:
KitzingerJ@cardiff.ac.ukTelephone: +44 (0)29 208 74571
Fax: N/A
Extension: 74571
Location: Room 0.55A, Bute Building
'Before I Die' Festival, May 11th - 20th 2013
The 'Before I Die' Festival - a festival for the living about dying, curated by Jenny Kitzinger, will take place over ten days beginning May 11th.
Festival events in and around Cardiff will include music, art, poetry, theatre, film, expert panels and public debate. The events are designed to inspire, inform, support and raise debate about death and dying.
The festival is part of a growing social movement to reflect on how people manage death and dying and is linked to a network of events across the UK for 'dying awareness' week.
Read Professor Kitzinger’s Welcome and introduction to the festival
'Before I Die' Festival website
'Before I Die' Festival calendar of events
Recent Research
Latchem, J and Kitzinger, J (2012) 'What is important to residents with neurological conditions and their relatives in rehabilitation and long-term care centres?', Research Report, Cardiff University
What is important to residents with neurological conditions...
Kitzinger, Jenny and Kitzinger, Celia. 2012. The 'window of opportunity' for death after severe brain injury: Family experiences. Sociology of Health and Illness doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12020
The 'window of opportunity' for death after severe brain injury...
Coma, Consciousness and Culture: medical decision-making in the 21st century (Rockefeller fellowship, November 2011)
Celia Kitzinger & Jenny Kitzinger discuss their research at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center
Research Interests
- Risk, science and health. Jenny has researched a range of health issues from AIDS to health inequalities. Much of her work specifically addresses debates about risk, ethics and emerging technologies (e.g. nanotechnology, and stem cell research). Jenny is now examining the cultural representations of, and debates about, coma and severe brain injury.
- Brain injury.
Jenny is working in collaboration with Prof Celia Kitzinger (from the University of York) to study the cultural, social and ethical dimensions of coma and severe brain injury with a focus on decision-making about medical treatment. The research involves analysis of statutory frameworks (e.g. the Mental Capacity Act, 2005) alongside examining media representations, scientific papers and press releases about neuroscience, coma and recovery. Celia and Jenny are also carrying out in-depth interviews with families of people in vegetative/minimally conscious states. They are in receipt of a Rockefeller residential scholarship to write up this work.
- Jenny serves on the Royal College of Physicians Working Party rewriting guidelines on the management of the 'vegetative' state, and on the Nuffield Council on bioethics 'Working Party on novel neurotechnologies to intervene in the brain'
- She also organized the symposium on Coma, Consciousness and Serious Brain Injury: medical humanities and decision-making (funded by the Wellcome Trust, Sept. 2011)
- Sexual violence. Jenny's work around sexual violence has included examining the emergence of child sexual abuse as a public issue, the representation of social work intervention scandals, the discovery of 'false memory syndrome', responses to a feminist social awareness advertising campaign and the development of anti-violence initiatives in schools.
Jenny has written extensively about questions of media influence. She is also an expert in focus group research methods, and is especially concerned with the best way of using this methodology in sensitive and innovative ways to explore key social issues.
Teaching
BA Module:
- Researching Media Audiences
Previously taught modules include: 'Understanding Media Audiences', 'Risk and Health Reporting', 'Communication Research Methods', 'Feminist Theory and Media Studies'.
Other Roles
Director - 'Risk, Science, Health and Media Research Group'
Publications
Books
Human Cloning in the Media: from science fiction to science practice, Routledge (2008) (co-author).
Framing Abuse: media influence and public understandings of sexual violence against children’ , Pluto (2004).
'Mass Media and Power in Modern Britain', Oxford University Press (1997) (co-author).
'The Circuit of Mass Communication: media strategies, representation and audience reception in the AIDS crisis', Sage (1998) (co-author).
Developing Focus Group Research: politics, theory and practice, Sage (co-edited) (1999).
'Great Expectations’, Hochland & Hochland press (1998) (co-author)
Selected publications by theme
Jenny has published over a hundred chapters and articles, contributing to journals such as The European Journal of Communication, Media, Culture and Society, Feminism and Psychology and Sociology of Health and Illness.
Research
Research Grants
Jenny's recent grant funded awards explore the following areas:
- Vegetative and minimally conscious states: Creating a web resource for families of severely brain injured patients (ESRC Knowledge Exchange Award, and DIPEx charity, February 2013)
- Coma, Consciousness and Culture: medical decision-making in the 21st century (Rockefeller fellowship, November 2011)
- 'Media coverage and audience reception of people with disfigurement or visible loss of function' (Healing Foundation, 2 years)
- Coma, Consciousness and Serious Brain Injury: medical humanities and decision-making (Wellcome Trust, September 2011)
- UK National Newspaper Coverage of Hybrid Embryos' (Medical Research Council, Association of Medical Sciences, Wellcome Trust, and Science Media Centre, 2009)
- 'Risk Actors and Public Risk' the media (Review project commissioned by Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform - BERR, 2008)
- 'Media framing of risk' (A three year project examining emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, GM crops and cloning).
- 'The production, consumption and circuits of meanings around genomics' (ESRC, CESAGen, 3 years).
- 'Explanations in genetics: causality and accountability' (Wellcome Trust, Department of Medical Genetics / ENCAP, 3 years)
- 'An analysis of trends in the coverage of Science and Technology' (Office of Science and Technology, 1 year)
- 'Public Discourses, and discourses about 'publics', in stem cell research' (ESRC, 2 years)
- 'Representation of women scientists in the UK media' (UKRC, 1 year)
Postgraduate Students
PhD Supervision
Recent or current supervision includes theses on:
- Maternal mortality and advocacy strategies
- Paedophilia on the internet
- The hybrid embryo debate
- Audience responses to human genetic research debates
- Cultural discourses about breast feeding
- The BSE crisis and the role of information management
- The media’s role in the MMR vaccination crisis
- The development of media policies on disability
- News coverage of health inequalities and government health policies
- The representation of social problems in soap opera
- The use of creative writing by incest survivors
- Representations of rape and murder
Biography
Professor of Media and Communications Research. Formerly Reader in Sociology at Brunel. Previously worked at the Glasgow Media Group and, before that, in Social and Political Sciences, Cambridge University.