Member of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain
Writer Associate in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, 2017-2021.
Short stories published in anthologies.
Communications and press releases
For Bristol Rock Centre and Downend Community History and Arts Project.
Bid development
Helping clients to write bids for funding organisations including the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, and the British Council.
Fundraising Consultant with Orchard Fundraising, which provides fundraising consultancy and support services to charities, educational institutions, and not-for-profits.
Created by Mercy Khozi and Helen Rana, this handy little book contains phrases, verbs and nouns for the seven local languages most widely spoken and understood in Zambia:
- Bemba
- Kaonde
- Lozi
- Lunda
- Luvale
- Nyanja
- Tonga
It is illustrated with black and white line drawings that show which area of Zambia each language is mainly used in and depict a costume or custom of the people who speak each language.
This phrase book will enable you to get by in the local language - wherever you are in Zambia!
Volunteer Tales: Experiences of Working Abroad
Foreword by Anita Roddick
A great number of people consider volunteering at some point in their life and this is a nuts and bolts guide to volunteering full of honest accounts from the people who know. These are true-life accounts from people of all walks of life and ages who decided to leave their 'normal' lives behind to take up the volunteer challenge overseas. Their stories include tales of travel and adventure, tales of hardship, tales of kindness, frustration and humour.
Reading them, you too will experience culture shock in Ghana, the fear of war in Sierra Leone, helplessness in the face of poverty in Cambodia, fishing for piranha in Suriname, the struggles of an outsider in China and much, much more. They will open your eyes to new worlds and may even change your outlook in the ways they changed the volunteers.
Disability and Aid: An Ethnography of Logics and Practices of Distribution in a Ugandan Refugee Camp - MariaTheres Schuler
Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies series.
At a time when rights are increasingly placed on the humanitarian agenda, this book provides a unique ethnographic account of the dynamics of aid to disabled people in a Ugandan refugee camp. By unraveling the complexities of social, material and institutional interdependencies, the author invites us to rethink conventional notions of dependence and vulnerability. Exploring issues of personhood as they relate to the exchange of material goods and care, the book offers a thought-provoking perspective on the seemingly promising shift towards a rights-based approach. A compelling read for anyone seeking to reshape the humanitarian agenda.
Dobrivoje Beljkasic
140-page catalogue for the major retrospective of this Bosnian painter's life and work, held at the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 2023.
'A Painter with a Vivd Imagination' - an exhibition celebrating the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth, 1923-2023.
This project explores the material, technological, and cultural aspects of the most iconic artifact of the COVID-19 crisis—the face mask. Historians of science, technology, medicine, and the environment unmask in short essays the complexity of a seemingly simple object and unveil its many layers and different usages in both material and non-material terms.
The project is hosted by Department III (Artefacts, Action, Knowledge) of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) and is inspired by the department’s unique perspective on on studying the history of science that considers the changing role of artefacts: texts, objects, and spaces.
Exhibition display texts at the Strauhof Museum, Zurich - for LITAR
Rural-Urban Migration and Agro-Technological Change in Post-Reform China
How do rural Chinese households deal with the conflicting pressures of migrating into cities to work as well as staying at home to preserve their fields? This is particularly challenging for rice farmers, because paddy fields have to be cultivated continuously to retain their soil quality and value.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and written sources, this book describes farming households' strategic solutions to this predicament. It shows how, in light of rural-urban migration and agro-technological change, they manage to sustain both migration and farming. It innovatively conceives rural households as part of a larger farming community of practice that spans both staying and migrating household members and their material world.
Encountering - Retracing - Mapping: The Ethnographic Legacy of Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschnaiter
For 40 years, the Ethnological Museum of the University of Zurich has preserved collections of cultural and historical significance by Heinrich Harrer (1912 - 2006) and Peter Aufschnaiter (1899 - 1973): with a focus on Tibet, New Guinea, Brazil, Suriname and French Guiana.
For the first time, this volume presents the extensive ethnographic heritage of the two Austrian travellers and mountaineers in excerpts from all the collections. Based on the artefacts, we ask about the scientific, idealistic and ethical value of such histroric collections today - for us as for the descendants of the former manufacturers and users of the objects.
Animals through Chinese History: Earliest Times to 1911
This thoughtfully edited collection offers rich and varied work by an interdisciplinary community of scholars thinking with and about animals over the longue durée of Chinese history. Drawing on an extensive array of primary sources, the essays explore not only developments in the human-animal relationship but the ways in which the Chinese have thought about the world with and through animals.
It reveals the profound material and symbolic influence of animals on state and society, and offers fresh insights into the impacts of four thousand years of human activity on zoological China. The volume demonstrates the value of ranging broadly across region, time period, and source, and readers will find exciting new work on animals in agronomy, ritual practices, consumption of all sorts, literature, ethics, material culture, and much more.
Museum Cooperation between Africa and Europe
At a time of major transformations in the conditions and self-conceptions of cultural history and ethnological museums worldwide, it has become increasingly important for these museums to engage in cooperative projects.
This book brings together insights and analyses of a wide variety of approaches to museum cooperation from different expert perspectives. Featuring a variety of African and European points of view and providing detailed empirical evidence, it establishes a new field of museological study and provides some suggestions for future museum practice.
Research:
Helen Rana (2023) Community Building Through Local History Stories, The Regional Historian, Annual Journal of the Regional History Centre, University of the West of England, New Series No. 4.
Helen Rana, Dan Knox and Guru Prabhakar (2023). Entrepreneurial storytelling: Using a consistent story to create and sustain a business: Case studies of two migrant entrepreneurs, International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 28(1).
Helen Rana and Guru Prabhakar (2022). Heritage Entrepreneurship, winner of best doctoral poster at Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) Conference, York.
Senior Research Consultant for Tricolor Associates
Tricolor Associates is an award-winning change management consultancy for the heritage and cultural sectors, which delivers real impact to the world around us. We work with clients and projects as diverse as theatres, castles, cathedrals, museums, historic railways, ancient monuments, cemeteries, stately homes, historic ships, local museums, national museums, listed buildings, historic landscapes, archives, royal palaces and lidos, and help them ensure they have a future through organisational and project-driven change. We specialise in developing and delivering projects for the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council, Inspiring Science Fund, London Borough of Culture and others like the Towns Fund and UK City of Culture.
Qualitative research interviews for 'Beyond the Multiplex: Audiences for Specialised Film in English Regions'
'Beyond the Multiplex' is a three year project that seeks to understand how to enable a wider range of audiences to participate in a more diverse film culture. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project is driven by a fundamental belief in the cultural value of the moving image, and a desire to help to support our industry partners to develop sustainable, diverse audiences for films beyond the mainstream.
Publication: Tsitsou, L., Rana, H., and Wessels, B. 'The Formation of Film Audiences: Conference Proceedings'. University of Sheffield: The Digital Humanities Institute, 2022.
Blog post: 'Watching from the Audience's Perspective'
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