Dr Emma Williams

Emma Williams is a developmental lecturer and researcher at the University of Surrey. She is involved in several interdisciplinary collaborations involving the use of participatory arts-based approaches with young people. These aim to develop innovative methods that help us find out more about the lived experience of young people, as well as what they find beneficial to their mental health and wellbeing.

Emma was a co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded grant ‘Playing A/Part’, an arts-science collaboration involving academics in drama, music, media arts and psychology exploring the identities and experiences of autistic girls and adolescents using participatory arts-based approaches.

Currently, she is a co-investigator on the UKRI-funded interdisciplinary CREATE project which uses living labs to bring together arts, science and youth perspectives. The goal is to co-produce novel methods, tools and resources aimed at unlocking the potential of participatory arts-based processes to help us better understand the mental health and wellbeing of young people.

Emma has used arts-based methods of evaluation such as photo elicitation and drawings in projects involving school-aged children. She has expertise in the collection, analysis, meta-summary and meta-synthesis of qualitative data.