Nurse researcher Cathy Soreny is celebrating two recent successes for her PhD research. Cathy is undertaking a part-time PhD in Creative Practice for Health at Sheffield Hallam University. At the NCA she works as patient and public engagement and involvement lead in the Donal O’Donoghue Renal Research Centre, and as Clinical Research Fellow in the Centre for Clinical and Care Research.
Cathy’s PhD research uses filmmaking and co-design to explore self-representations of communication disabilities. With her group of lived experience collaborators – The Stories Beyond Words Collective – they have co-created a documentary film and immersive video installations. The film ‘Dysfluent Journeys’ won best documentary at the Wine Dark Disability Film Festival, which Cathy attended with collaborator Christine Simpson.
She and her collective were also invited to run the opening workshop at the Communication Matters conference in Leeds, which explores the world of AAC – Alternative and Augmentative Communication approaches. For this they organised a mini film festival showcasing work by filmmakers with communication disabilities, a community discussion panel around representation, as well as filming short clips with AAC communicators for a future installation. She is pictured with collaborator Jamie Preece (photo courtesy of Communication Matters).