Holocaust Poetry Award For Swansea Professor
Professor Frances Rapport, Professor of Qualitative Health Research at Swansea University’s School of Medicine, has won an award at the 2007 Ethnographic Poetry Competition, sponsored by the US-based American Anthropology Association (AAA), the biggest Anthropology association in the world.
Professor Rapport won the prestigious award for ethnographic poetic representations that have developed from research into how notions of health, illness and wellbeing are narrated as part of a holocaust survivor testimony.
She has been working intensively with the remaining Holocaust survivors resident in South-East Wales for the past two years, conducting in-depth ‘life story’ and ‘health’ interviews and producing ethnographic representations of the transcripts. Her work will form part of a new book she is writing on the subject, Poetry of Memoir: Narrating the Holocaust.
Professor Rapport said: “I am delighted to receive this award. Working closely with Holocaust survivors has made me realise how important it is to continue to honour their stories by giving them prominence and attempting to reach as wide an audience as possible”
Professor Rapport received her award at the annual meeting of the AAA in Washington DC and read out her work to the large audience present. The award was sponsored by the Society for Anthropology and Humanism within the AAA. Professor Rapport’s work is due to be published in the Society’s journal, Anthropology and Humanism in June.
Following her award, from January 2009, Professor Rapport has been offered a prestigious six-month visiting professorship at Harvard University’s Department of Psychiatry, examining the health consequences of Holocaust survivors and how people deal with trauma.
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