Research

Our Director, Niven Whatley, is a PhD Doctoral Researcher in Hispanic Studies and has also published and reseacrhed on a number of educational subjects.

Please see below some details of his current and previous areas of research and get in touch if you wish to find out more or perhaps even to commission research and reports of your own.

Whether you would like guidance on archives, planning, presentation or publication of your own research project or are representing a company which is looking to commission some professional Market Research, we may be able to offer services and assistance to you.

Niven’s research is below, in reverse chronological order and more detail or access to more complete resources can be requested by contacting us.   

1) PhD Research – Voices from the Periphery – Representations of Marginalised Female Immigrants in The New Spain (1997-2017)

In spite of an alleged move towards open, democratic politics in Spain, female representation in recent cultural publication is still predominantly that of the exotic, pathetic or visually fetishistic and spectres of paternalism remain in the sociological mind-set.

A collective female memory is difficult to pinpoint, since the female immigrant often appears voyeuristically, as a two dimensional character whose presence remains peripheral and furthermore, female authors seem largely to “accept being an “other”” (Oppermann, 1994). However, with newfound variety in authorship, it will be valuable to investigate notable indications of a forward-thinking agenda in Spanish literary output.

In my thesis I will first present a review of Spanish immigration laws and enactments and a history of gender and women’s writing in Spain.

Following this, I have selected primary works for principal research and I will consider them within chapters on: Representations of female immigrants from China, Latin America and Africa;

Space, setting and belonging; Maternity and female roles in Spanish society.

My literature review scrutinises discussions of the female immigrant’s condition in monographic works by Flesler, Guillén, Faszer-McMahon and Ketz and considers how effectively the plight of female immigrants is described and at what level more profound consideration of this liminal group is required.

To set this critical genre against the current socio-literary milieu, I will explore how key philosophical interpretations (such as Foucault’s ‘heterotopias’ and Derrida’s ‘specters of Marx’) may be applied or contradicted in relation to specifically female immigration works.

Through this rigorous and multifaceted exploration, together with in-depth review of discourse analytics from online journalism, I will also look for evidence of hope for gender and socio-political equality and attempt to elucidate the conservative and liberal dimensions of the representations of the female immigrant.

2) MESH guide publication – The Use of Information Technology and Software to Support the Integration and Attainment of English as Additional Language Learners in Schools

3) Educational Research – Strategies used by adolescents as they learn

4) Educational Research – The constraints on adolescent learning                

5) Action research – intellectual and emotional development issues in MFL teaching and practice for children with epileptic episodes