Sabrina Duff

To preface, my work looks through the lens of the autistic experience in adulthood. My goal is to develop access to therapy by exploring qualitative methods. In my thesis, I used letter-writing as a method to achieve in depth responses from my participants. It allowed them to engage with me in a constraint free environment, as well as shine new light on relevant areas of research that needs to be done.

I also engaged in creative writing techniques to further translate the research from clinical into art, so that wider audiences can engage with it and offer insight if they choose to. I found that imaginary conversation was helpful in that translation, in which it displayed an understandable flow of thought for the reader.

I entered the RCA with my previous skills in illustration and photography as a merit towards my research development. Although my background of skills were centred in the arts, I have always held great potential towards writing and research design.

In the electives of my studies, I collaborated with students to create effective projects that centre a wider audience:

One project focused on creating a case study that centred the ethics of algorithmic functions on Instagram, and how the algorithm is shaped by pre-existing biases of the users. We measured three types of systemic oppression in western society and analysed the prevalence of these on the app, and how it is perpetrated amongst the hashtag system.

My role was to propose three areas of oppression to be analysed for the HIITs system: Misogyny, Ableism, and Racism. I then took the notes and research pool collected and analysed by the team members and wrote the research paper with full analysis and outcomes together.

Another was a campaign for the charity 'Save the Children', which involved co-collaborative concepts to obtain insight into the impacts of natural flooding. The approach focused on natural disasters because of climate emergencies, and dedicated the outcome to how interactive art exhibits can allow a therapeutic interaction amongst the target audience (children in the affected flooded areas.) My role was to design a piece of research which allowed my team to inform their work effectively. I explored the effects of flooding in three ways: 1. Impact on nutrition, 2. displacement of homes lived in by children, 3. examples of young voices in response to climate injustices. The outcome allowed the project to develop better understanding of lived experiences and anticipate better design for the proposed collaborative methodologies.