Dr Michelle Elliot (PhD, MSc, Diploma in Therapeutic Recreation, BSc) is a Senior Lecturer in the Occupational Therapy & Arts Therapies Division. She is also a full member of the Centre for Applied Social Sciences.
- Overview
- Research Interests
- Research Publications
- Teaching & Learning
- Activities & Awards
I am a certified (Canada) and HCPC registered occupational therapist and occupational scientist.
My professional practice work in Canada was primarily with adolescents and adults with eating disorders. Through this work I became increasingly interested in learning how people transform from ‘one way of being in life to another’ – whether along a recovery path or as part of a life journey. How these processes of change are represented in narrative forms has also been central to my work in therapeutic practices and learning communities.
I take occupation seriously - for its therapeutic potential, its complexity and simplicity, its universality and particularity, its individual meaning and social construction, its developmental capacity and its border crossing possibilities. My work involves the exploration of occupation beyond alignment to particular life stages or conditions.
More specifically, I am curious about experiences, understandings and practices that exist alongside and emerge within occupation such as reflection, creativity, community, objects, and relationship to spaces, places and time.
Having lived, worked, studied, travelled and taught in different cities and countries, I aspire to keep the transactional and intersubjective nature of occupation central to my ways of thinking, being and doing.
Affiliations/Memberships to Other Organisations:
- HCPC registered (Occupational Therapist)
- Member: Royal College of Occupational Therapists / British Association of Occupational Therapists
- Member: International Society for Occupational Science
- Fellow, Higher Education Academy
Professional Social Media:
My research interests and praxis is narratively informed, existing at the intersection of different bodies of knowledge and disciplines. Through exploring occupation within and beyond the lens of health and wellbeing, further dialogues, collaborations and practice contexts have emerged.
Central to my research is a desire to enact and investigate what it means to lean into curiosity, to listen for understanding, to be mindful of how theories frame issues and responses, and to employ critically informed questioning.
Active Research Interests:
- Narrative construction
- Narrative representations of experience
- Reflexivity
- Transition
- Spaces, places, time
- Intersubjectivity
- Objects
Research Methods:
- Qualitative Methodologies
- Narrative
- Ethnography
- Autoethnography
- Phenomenology
Research/Knowledge Exchange Centre Membership:
- Full member of the Centre for Applied Social Sciences
My teaching derives primarily from occupational science scholarship and critical considerations of occupational therapy practices and theories. I aspire to cultivate brave and safe learning environments and facilitate learning whereby students develop a familiarity with reading, thinking and expressing ideas that are contextualised in different bodies of knowledge.
How this understanding is then critically considered or translated into actions, from multiple perspectives, is part of my approach to supporting learners to become active and collaborative members of professional communities.
Practice and professionally relevant skills are more than what we ‘do’ when working with others. Learning who and how we are with others is a different developmental process.
Additionally, how we understand the knowledges that inform our choices, reasons and decisions are further practical skills that are explored in the approaches I take to facilitating learning.
Across all occupational therapy programmes, I supervise final year dissertations.
I also supervise and examine doctoral research.
I teach on the following courses:
- Master of Occupational Therapy / BSC (Hons) Occupational Therapy
- MSc (pre-registration) Occupational Therapy
- Advancing Practice MSc Occupational Therapy (post-registration)
2024 – Queen Margaret University Student Teaching and Representation (STaR) Award nomination: Best Teaching
2021 – Queen Margaret University Student Teaching and Representation (STaR) Award awarded: Best Distant Teaching
2021 – Queen Margaret University Student Teaching and Representation (STaR) Award nomination: The Douglas Award (Most Inspirational Staff Member)
