Critical and creative engagement
I maintain an ongoing critical and creative engagement and inquiry which helps me to continue developing my various professional practices. I want to always ensure that I am questioning ‘the way things are’, and not merely replicating damaging systems or ways of being and doing.
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From October 2026 I will be a Human Geography PhD candidate at University of Plymouth. This research constitutes the next stage into an ongoing inquiry into what makes place sacred in contemporary times. The research strands include posthumanism and transcorporeality, anatheism and the divine after the divine, modern-communal and pre-historic ritual, neolithic Britain, Goethian observation and phenomenology, site-specific sacredness, and what it means for place to be both sacred-and-polluted.
My wider research includes mythopoetics, storytelling and folklore, psychology and trauma theory.
Published research
A means to an end: Israeli-run heritage sites in the West Bank of Palestine
My 2016 BA research was published in the International Journal of Tourism Anthropology.
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Since completing my MA in 2024, I have been regularly giving talks at various symposiums, study groups and creative conferences.
Previous talks
“Conviviality & Ecology: The hospitable poetics of place”
— The Convivial, Penryn, June 2025
“Working with the Understory, the Magick of the Below”
— Conjuring Creativity, London, March 2025
“Encounters with the Underworld: Entering, transforming and the erotics of reaching back out”
— The Convivial, Penryn, March 2025
“Minding the Gap: Exploring imaginal realms and the poetic image in the alchemical process of writing trauma”
— A BSA Auto/Biography Study Group Event, November 2024
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I maintain a regular explorative writing practice and have been working on a full length novel since finishing my MA with a creative writing dissertation. This year I have been challenging myself to put forward my shorter works and poetry for publication. Since mid 2025, I have had two poems published in journals and more to come in 2026!
Published
Holding questions in convivial hands - Substack
Spring speaks as if — in Indelible Issue #9: Awakening, LABRC
I return to the rock — in Stonework, Scarlett Tiger Press
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I am always making something — fizzy brain equals busy hands! I paint, draw, weave, embroider, make typewriter art, print… and am always keen to try different methodologies. I really enjoy repetitive work, and think of it as prayer-by-hand.
You can explore some of my MA projects here:
I sporadically post my creative endeavours on my Instagram. You can follow along at @_sophiecraven_ if you wish!
