Barbara Carbon | University of Chester

Barbara Carbon has recently started work as a part-time senior research assistant for CREST, University of Chester. She also works with adults with learning disabilities and in mental health and is training as a Gestalt Psychotherapist at the Manchester Gestalt Centre. In 2022 she coordinated and acted as the lead researcher on a creative community research project designed by Arts Connection under the Powys Localities Fund. Over the past few years she has been a freelance artist/researcher delivering a range of different creative projects within the different sections of her Powys community. For this she has been using her talents in music, theatre and visual art. She has been affiliated to the KULeuven since 2015 when she started her PhD research on the dialectic relationship between culture and technology with a particular focus on water and the Inga dams. She spent 13 months in the D.R.C. conducting participatory observation research in and around the dams, in a village with an artisanal dam, at water purification centers across the Bakongo province, on a container ship on the Congo River and on a Chinese fishing vessel operating on the Atlantic Ocean in Congolese waters.

Holding a Master of Arts in Social Work from Liverpool Hope University, an Initial Teacher Training Degree from the University of Antwerp and a Master of Arts in African Languages and Cultures from Ghent University, Barbara is passionate about environmental and social justice, equality and social inclusion. She has recently been reflecting on better ways to decolonize her writing and been working on a self-reflective article to explore her journey to reach this objective. She cares deeply about the natural world and has been involved in a range of local environmental initiatives. She is interested in research on the development of green skills, environmental sustainability and the building of strong communities in the face of climate change.