Suicide in/as Politics

Suicide in/as Politics is a 3 year interdisciplinary project, situated between sociology and political studies.

The project uses multiple qualitative methods to investigate the ways in which suicide is constructed and responded to in UK politics, and how members of diverse publics respond to the political uses of and responses to suicide.  

  1. We conducted a critical policy analysis (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016) of UK suicide prevention policies from 2009-2019, as well as 8 campaign documents produced by third sector organisations which related to suicide.  
  2. We conducted a thematic analysis of all mentions of ‘suicide’ in records of parliamentary debates (e.g. Hansard for Westminster, and the equivalent records for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland) from 2009-2019. 
  3. We took findings from our analysis of parliamentary debates and suicide prevention policies to a series of arts-based discussion groups with diverse members of the public. These groups used poetry, collaging and creative writing to allow participants to respond to the data.  

Funded by: Leverhulme Trust