Susan is responsible for the development and delivery of qualitative research methods training for undergraduate and postgraduate psychology students. She edited a Special Issue of Qualitative Research in Psychology on 'Teaching Qualitative Methods in Psychology' and, with Mark Forshaw, contributed a chapter on the effective supervision of undergraduate qualitative research projects to a volume on Teaching Psychology in Higher Education. Susan also teaches applied social psychology, and contributes to the Forensic Psychology Masters program, and convenes the Discourse Analysis Group, and the Visual Methods Group.
Conferences and Training
With Phil Healey, Head of Visual Art, Susan recently convened a symposium on Creative Responses to the Urban Environment (https://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/symposium-art-streets). Held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and open to the public, this interdisciplinary symposium explored the diversity of creative responses to our urban landscape – from street art and graffiti to yarn bombing and urban photography. The symposium brought together leading international contemporary researchers, curators, artists and photographers in the field of urban creativity.
With Drs Miranda Horvath and Jackie Gray, Susan convenes the Forensic Psychological Services' conference series on Sexual Violence, held most recently in September 2015 at Middlesex University. Drs Hansen, Horvath and Gray also designed and delivered a series of workshops on sexual violence commissioned by the British Psychological Society Learning Centre, as part of the Division of Forensic Psychology's Continuing Professional Development Workshop Series. These were on 'The Psychology of Sexual Violence', 'Preventing Sexual Violence' and 'Understanding and Preventing Sexual Violence' and were held in London and Glasgow.
Research Outputs & Interests
Susan has expertise in a range of qualitative methods, and a background in ethnomethodology, discursive psychology and conversation analysis. Although these are approaches usually confined to the analysis of transcribed video or audio data, in her current work she seeks to apply some of the key methodological tenets of these approaches to the analysis of visual data. This allows attention to features not available through traditional forms of visual analyses – and in particular, attention to the everyday methods of sense-making used by members themselves, as opposed to the imposition of our own sociological analytic categories.
Susan is particularly interested in the applied conversation analysis of forensic topics, including the negotiation of sexual consent and sexual refusal; and she has an ongoing interest in 'disputed' diagnostic categories within psychology; and in the psychology of sexualities; and in the psychology and social semiotics of street art and graffiti.
Susan’s current research explores communities' material engagements with, and affective responses to, street art and graffiti; the analysis of graffiti as a form of visual dialogue; and the promise of an archaeological approach to understanding street art and graffiti through the longitudinal photo documentation (or repeat photography) of single sites.
She serves on the board of the International Visual Sociology Association and on the international scientific committee for Street Art and Urban Creativity.
2016 - Walking with street art and graffiti: Engaging viewers in visual dialogue (with Dr Magali Peyrefitte, Sociology/Criminology) The Cultural Capital Exchange.
2013-2016 - Repeat photography (or "longitudinal photo-documentation") to study street art and graffiti as visual dialogue.
2010 - 2013 - Research on the overlaps between problem substance use and domestic and sexual violence experienced by young women. For Against Violence and Abuse (http://www.avaproject.org.uk) funded by the John Paul Getty Jnr Foundation.
2010 - 2013 - Evaluating the Stella Project Mental Health Initiative. For Against Violence and Abuse (www.avaproject.org.uk) funded by the Department of Health.
