Anna Smirnova

Anna has joined the project ‘Mobile Arts for Peace’(MAP) in 2021 and started her PhD journey at the School of Creative Arts at the University of Lincoln. Her PhD study aims to investigate what, how and why arts-based research and interventions contribute to the design, delivery and evaluation of peacebuilding curricula for/with young people in diverse social, political and cultural contexts. A practice-as-research element of the PhD is research support and assistance to the Kyrgyzstan team of MAP to analyse their practical activities in adapting cultural forms and artistic approaches for peacebuilding and developing recommendations about effective and sustainable ways of engaging youth in conflict resolution and decision-making.

Over 20 years Anna worked at the Department of Social Work of St. Petersburg State University (Russia) as a researcher and lecturer. She is a Candidate of Science in Sociology. In 2018 Anna finished a year-long educational programme in art-therapy and became a certified art-therapist. Since then, she has been using arts-based methods in teaching social work and investigating the problem of developing identity and agency in young people