Hannah Kahn - Creating a zine to engage new audiences

"My URSS project focused on mixed race identities in Britain, and how young people perform (express) these in everyday life. As part of the research, I interviewed several mixed individuals and used their responses to create a zine reflecting the many ways they expressed their identities. I then distributed this both online and in-person to allow members of the public to engage with and discuss these ideas.

Doing this taught me that although public engagement can be challenging - finding places to distribute the zine was slightly tricky - sharing research and communicating with the people the research is about and for is incredibly important, and keeps the research grounded in real experiences."

Read Hannah's zine online.

What got you involved in URSS?

I decided to get involved in URSS as I had been really enjoying the research side of my course and the greater research freedom of third year. I'm considering taking a research Masters next year, and doing URSS seemed like a great way to work on a project I was really passionate about while seeing if independent research was a path I wanted to go down.

What was the highlight of your research?

The highlight of my research was getting to interview my participants! I had never done interviews before and I was quite nervous about doing them, but I absolutely loved chatting with my interviewees, hearing their opinions and diving into what they thought and why

Would you recommend URSS to other students and why?

I would definitely recommend URSS to other students! I think having the freedom to choose your own topic and research an area you're genuinely passionate about is so different to doing research for your course. It's also a great way to experiment with research methods you haven't necessarily got to try before, and to gain confidence in your research skills more generally.