Dr Jennifer Fraser
BA (UVic), MA (UBC), PhD (London)
Learning Support Officer
Contact details
Office: Room 514, Department of Psychological Sciences
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7631 6736
Email: j.fraser@bbk.ac.uk
More about Dr Jennifer Fraser
Teaching and academic advice
I am available to help all students in the Department of Psychological Sciences with academic matters, writing help and study advice.
I teach a study skills module on Tuesday evenings during term time that is open to all students in the Department and addresses topics such as ‘Reading and note taking’, ‘Presentation skills’, ‘Writing lab reports’, ‘Using your reading in your writing’ and ‘Referencing and plagiarism’.
I also see students regularly for individual learning support sessions in which we address issues affecting their studies and develop strategies for improvement based on their own learning styles. These individual sessions are available as one off sessions or in blocks of 4-6 sessions.
Research
Broadly, my research and teaching interests lie in late-nineteenth and twentieth-century Latin American literature and visual culture, especially the Andes, and the relations between these and the discourses of science and gender in the construction of national and individual identities. In particular, I am interested in how groups or individuals who are at the margins of interpretive power claim authority to speak and what means and mediations they use to establish themselves hegemonically.
Currently I am engaged in a new project, which examines women’s autobiographical and fictional writing in the late nineteenth century in Peru. My research considers the purposes and possibilities of these genres for social theorising. In particular, I am interested in how these writers utilise the discourses of science to create the authority to give voice to their experiences inside and outside of national projects of reform.
I have a further research interest in technology-enhance learning, specifically in how we can be responsive to student feedback and find ways in which the teaching environment can address issues students identify as key to their learning process through the use of technology. An example of this responsiveness is a project entitled ‘Are you listening?: Decreasing anxiety and increasing motivation for language students acquiring listening comprehension skills’, for which I was awarded a Birkbeck Excellence in Teaching Award in 2010. The project involved developing 24 interactive online learning objects for first and second year Spanish language students. The project’s main outcomes, which have application across disciplines, include finding ways to decrease student anxiety and increase motivation to sit assessment; providing students with flexible learning options outside the classroom and in an interactive way that provides them with feedback; and improving students’ eLiteracy and familiarising them with the virtual learning environments.
Publications
Articles
‘Clorinda Matto de Turner’s Herencia as the Creation of an Alternative Social Knowledge’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 88 (2011), 97-112
Book reviews
Book review of Cultural Agency in the Americas, edited by Doris Sommer, Journal of Latin American Studies, 42 (2010), 207-208
