Lydia Hounat
About the researcher
I am a British-Algerian researcher and artist.
My research focuses on intergenerational healing in the Isefra (oral poetry) of Kabyle women in Algeria. I engage with interdisciplinary practices across analogue photography, emulsion photography, the essay form to articulate narratives around mixed-heritage, ancestral trauma and healing, and working within museum archives. My practice is also concerned with museum ethics and restoration of artefacts belonging to indigenous communities. I am interested in interrogating the term ‘decolonisation’ within these contexts, and how we/who gets to correct digital archives that aim to inform audiences about the origins of an artefact.
In the past I have collaborated as a writing mentor, workshop mentor and artist with the British Museum, English Heritage, Shout Out Loud, The Writing Squad, Barbican Young Poets, the Portico Library and Manchester International Festival. I have acted as a Writer-in-Residence at MMU Special Collections Archives and Virtual Translator-in-Residence at National Centre for Writing. My debut pamphlet Notes of a Mongrel’s DNA is forthcoming in 2023 with Hesterglock Press.
PhD abstract
Thesis title
Intergenerational Healing in Kabyle Women’s Isefra
Abstract
I am investigating the phenomenon of intergenerational healing, a process in which healing and its practices are inherited genetically and culturally. I explore this process within the indigenous Kabyle women of Algeria, whose use of oral poetry, known as Isefra, is used to consolidate traumatic experiences and hold stories of the past in the now, heirlooms I conceive as the trauma-echo and healing-echo.
I wield autoethnography to reveal intimate dimensions of healing practices within my own family, as well as negotiating questions of insider-outsider positionality as an English-Kabyle woman. I explore the specific rewards of working within family as well as its challenges to Western academic traditions of inquiry. One such discovery examines how healing can occur through self-erasure and repressed memory, i.e., conscious and unconscious forgetting Isefra. I rationalise this through post-memory, using the works of scholars Lamya Sadiq, Johan Fredrikson, Chris Haffenden, and Cathy Caruth. These frameworks map how erasure has conversely been used to self-empower within Kabyle communities, i.e., forgetting so as to not be defined by the pain of remembering.
As a performative methodology, I use cassette tapes as the primary medium in which I gather qualitative data from within the community. Lived experience and first-hand accounts are my primary source of factual material, in turn refocusing voice towards Kabyle people, as opposed to citing secondary historical resources. They metaphorise knowledge preservation and memory, in that like the Isefra, the materiality of the conversations will eventually decay and be lost. Thus, I galvanise the duty of consciously preserving one’s history.
Throughout, I return to Kabyle women’s positionality, their significant contribution to art as performance, and the impact of their erasure throughout Algerian history. I frequently cite Francophone literature in the works of authors Assia Djebar and Taos Amrouche. I underpin these literary analyses with Derrida’s Deconstruction; the cultural and linguistic intermingling of Algeria forms the premise for a scattered, splintered
Kabyle-Algerian identity, which I later conceptualise as interlinguality. My art-practice comprises of the Voicebox sculpture, whose mixed-media apparatus (analogue film, cassettes, wood, mirrors) is analogous of the various insights gathered over the course of this study. I conclude on the nature of this doctorate as live performance of my own intergenerational healing.
Researcher bio
I am a British-Algerian researcher and artist.
I am interested in discourses around intergenerational trauma, community oral history, intangible heritage and erasure studies. I look to popularise the term intergenerational healing within these discourses, the concept of culturally and genetically inheriting/embodying healing practices effectuated through traumatic experience. My research currently explores the Isefra (oral poetry) of Kabyle women in Algeria. I interweave photography, experimental writing, collage and sculpture to articulate narratives around mixed-heritage, ancestral trauma and healing. My practice is also concerned with museum ethics and restoration of artefacts belonging to indigenous communities. I am interested in interrogating the term ‘decolonisation’ within these contexts, and how we/who gets to correct digital archives that aim to inform audiences about the origins of an artefact.
In the past I have collaborated as a writing/workshop mentor, curator and artist with the British Museum, English Heritage, Shout Out Loud, The Writing Squad, Barbican Young Poets, The Portico Library, Manchester Metropolitan University’s The Poetry Library, and Manchester International Festival. I have acted as a Writer-in-Residence at MMU Special Collections Archives and Virtual Translator-in-Residence at National Centre for Writing. I published my debut pamphlet Notes of a Mongrel’s DNA in 2023 with Hesterglock Press.
Research interests
Intergenerational healing, Psychoanalytic theory, Trauma Theory, Post-colonial Theory, Decolonisation, Translation, Autoethnography, Interdisciplinary Practice, Voice, Performativity, Oral Traditions, Indigenous Narratives, Plant Teacher Medicines, Kabyle Women, Erasure, Algerian History, Mixed-Heritage Narratives, Positionality.
External links
Areas of expertise
Artistic Practice: Poetry, Visual Poetry, Translation, Essay, Analogue Photography, Collage, Sculpture, Failure practices, Erasure
Research: Kabyle women, Mixed-heritage Narratives, Isefra, Taqbaylit, Algerian History, Francophone Literature & Theory, Erasure Studies, Intergenerational Healing
Committee memberships
- NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education)
- The Writing Squad
Professional engagements
- Research Student Teaching Associate 2022 – present (School of Falmouth & Art)
- Writer-in-Residence Special Collections Archives – Manchester Metropolitan University
- Workshop Mentor at Falmouth University and Manchester Metropolitan University
- Virtual Translator-in-Residence at National Centre of Writing
- Founding Editor, SOBER. Magazine
Grants and awards
- Develop Your Creative Practice Music & Mixed-Heritage Narratives: Notes of A Mongrel (A Soundtrack), Arts Council England, 2023
- Falmouth Doctoral Studentship, Falmouth University, 2022
Qualifications
| Year | Qualification | Awarding body |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | PGCE 14+ English (Literacy & ESOL) | University of Bolton |
| 2020 | MA Writing | Royal College of Art |
| 2018 | BA English with Creative Writing | Falmouth University |
Contributions
- How to Defend the Dead: M NourbeSe Philip’s ZONG! (2008) & Defending my Grandmother. Paper given at CWWA Conference, Falmouth University (2025)
- Malika Booker’s Exhibition: Museum for Black Mothers of Black Bodies Murdered in State Custody, Curator and Writer, MMU Poetry Library (2025)
- A Chameleon Medium: Mirroring Illustration and Mixed-Heritage Perspectives (Academic Poster) for Illustration & Heritage Conference, UAL (2024)
- A Silent Wildfire: Afflictions on Sharing Kabyle Trauma. Paper given at Sex, Scandal & Sensation Conference (2024).
- First Trimester: Creative Practice Paper for MAI Feminism & Visual Culture Journal, Falmouth University (2020)