Dr Lauren O'Hagan

Professional biography

Lauren's research can be broadly split into four main strands:

1. Book inscriptions and performances of social class/power mediation: She has investigated how different class groups in the late 19th/early 20th century used book inscriptions to contest or perpetuate their class identities by using language, image, colour, typography, texture and materiality. An important aspect of this research has been unlocking the 'hidden histories' of working-class and lower-middle-class individuals who have typically been left out of official records of the Edwardian era.
 
2. Food advertising/packaging and public health communication: She has explored how food companies can circumvent legislation on food packaging and advertising by using semiotic resources to promote supposedly healthy eating discourses and convince consumers that a product is “healthy”. She has also investigated how marketers shape public understanding of science by drawing upon the meaning potentials of language and other semiotic resources.
 
3. Postcards, posters and propaganda: She has a keen interest in the historical use of postcards and posters to promote and spread political propaganda in a palatable format to the general public. Her research interests lie particularly in the women’s suffrage movement and the Irish fight for Home Rule in the early 20th century, but she has also researched the 1922 prohibition referendum in Sweden.
 
4. Music memorabilia, memories and identities: More recently, her attention has turned to music memorabilia, particularly battle jackets and tour t-shirts, and how they are used by fans to signal individual and collective identity. She is also interested in (online) fandoms, participatory culture and media representations of musicians, and has explored this in relation to Rory Gallagher, Phil Lynott and Tom Petty. Her interests also lie particularly in the history, sociology and musicology of 20th-century Irish popular music.

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).

Some of Lauren's impact and engagement work includes:

Collaborations

• Collaboration with Actively Learn –  a free online education platform –  to provide 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
• Collaboration with Futurum –  a free online magazine aimed at introducing 14-19-year-olds to the world of work in STEM and SHAPE – to translate her research into free educational resources that can be used in the classroom or at home
• Collaboration with Heavy Metal Therapy to produce a blog post about her own personal mental health experiences and music, and also helped develop resources about the link between battle jackets and mental health

Exhibitions and Events

• Creation of 10 digital Museum in a Box collections based on her research to facilitate long-distance learning on social history and visual studies
• Development and curation of a digital exhibition 'Views from the Blue'  which uses drone photography as a means of encouraging viewers to reflect on how drones have created new ways of visualising our world
• Development and curation of a digital exhibition ‘Prize Books and Politics: Rethinking Working-Class Life in Edwardian Britain’, which used images of book inscriptions to tell the stories of working-class individuals.
• Stall at Family History Show offering expert advice to the general public about how to use book inscriptions to research their family history. 

Interviews/Keynotes/Podcasts

• Development of a 20-minute podcast about her research for the DarntonWatch podcast series
• Invited keynote speaker at Lancaster University Literacy Research Centre (2021) and University of Leicester History and Politics Postgraduate Conference (2020)
• Radio interview with BBC Berkshire (2020) regarding her research on the pineapple as a status symbol

Publications

• 49 peer-reviewed publications (1 monograph, 1 edited volume, 5 book chapters and 42 journal articles) 
• 12 general interest articles on her research for The Conversation, Discover Your Ancestors and Wales Arts Review, amongst others
• 42 blog posts on her research for Cardiff University Special Collections, Edwardian Culture Network and British Association for Victorian Studies, amongst others

Click here for an up-to-date list of all her publications.

Lauren is an active member of the FoodKom research group based at Örebro University in Sweden and frequently collaborates with researchers in the Department of Media and Communication Studies. She has written two papers with Prof. Göran Eriksson on the marketing of radium-based products (Science Communication) and cod liver oil (Food and Foodways) in early twentieth-century Sweden. They are currently working on a third paper together about the marketing of Läkerol. 

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 the Reading, Writing and... Rebellion project.