I’m so pleased to have recently published the results of a project I led in my previous postdoc. In this project, I investigated how participatory methods and creative practice can be used to sensitively explore lived experience of past disaster among people living beside persistently active volcanoes. I worked with older people in communities west of Fuego volcano, Guatemala, many of whom I have worked with and known for years. The paper is an exploration of these creative participatory methods – including their strengths and some challenges in transforming research theory into practice – so the “results” of this study are much more evaluative and reflective than in previous papers I’ve contributed to. This is also my first paper as solo author, which has been a strange and enlightening experience! You have complete creative control, but collaborating on a co-authored paper brings a sense of shared purpose that enlivens the writing process in a different way.
The main questions that the paper aims to answer are:
- (How) can illustration be used as a tool for exploring memories of volcanic disaster?
- (How) can illustration be used to share these memories with at-risk people who have not experienced such disaster?
You can judge for yourself how I answered them – the paper is available open-access here. (Look out for the Spanish version, available as Supplementary Material 4 here.) To tantalise, here’s my favourite figure from the paper:
If you’re interested in the process behind the paper, I’ve previously written about the work involved in this project here and here.
Both the paper and the research that went into it represent a deeply personal connection to Fuego and the people that live around it. I am very grateful to them for sharing their time with me, and for the University of Bristol and the Ixchel project (led by the University of Edinburgh) for supporting me to do this research. I now work at the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), which has been an illuminating adventure so far. I’m excited to continue growing here in Singapore while working to maintain my connections with colleagues in Bristol, Edinburgh, and Guatemala!
Reasoning With Volcanoes 
Well done, Ailsa! Fantastic to read this latest update and congratulations on getting solo-published!
It strikes me that your approach – using Illustration to complement other research – is a fresh and exciting and very personal way to present your findings as your further your ideas and thinking about how to convey and preserve both the lived experience of those impacted by these naturally-occuring phenomena; at the same time, to share that with those of us who watch on in awe but have little appreciation of what to be living in the shadow of a volcano may mean. Keep us updated and carry on blogging!
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Bravo Ailsa and many congratulations on your first solo-publication! It strikes me that the type of research and the way you then present – using illustration – is a novel and very relevant way to communicate your findings to different audiences: the localy people you have got to know who have lived-experience of an erupting volcano and the impact it has on their lives; academics who have in-depth knowledge of the science involved but can never predict with exact certainty the outcome; laypeople like myself who are interested and for whom a picture is “worth a thousand words” even if an academic paper requires you to have a certain word count! Bravo! – keep illustrating, keep writing and keep updating!
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Very interesting stuff! I’m looking for a 3-word saying that begins with the word Fuego(a?). The second and third words are short, but I can’t get a picture edited to show them. My daughter has been in Ecuador for 10 years now, and it’s tatooed on her upper arm in a recent picture, but not so you can read it. Can you help a other out?
My name is Ashley Youngman and my email address is ashleyyoungman@alumni.brown.edu.
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