Mrs Kirsty Benyon-Marno

(Formerly Kirsty Abbott)

Doctoral Teaching Assistant

Teaching on BA Education

Research Assistant

PhD Student

Qualifications

I studied the BA Education programme at the University of Plymouth from 2014-2017, being awarded the Dean's award in 2015, graduating with first-honours, and being awarded the Outstanding Dissertation Award for my feminist, autoethnographic work entitled 'Large Breasts and Embodied Shame: An autoethnographical tale of growing up sexually harassed and the scars that are left'. I then went on to present this work at the annual BESA conference in 2017.

 I then studied my MA Education, also at the University of Plymouth, from 2017-2020, achieving the Nico de Bruin award for the year 2019/2020 for my dissertation, awarded to a piece deemed imaginative / creative and considered to make a difference to educational practice. This work focused on my interest in the impact of emotive experiences of trauma, grief and loss on education, and was entitled 'Death, Despondence and the Dissertation: An autoethnographical exploration of experiencing sudden bereavement and the consequential effects on engagement within Higher Education in the UK'. 

My doctoral thesis, currently entitled 'Lessons of Loss, Life and Those Left Behind; An Exploration of the Experience of Student Suicide Loss within the Higher Education Learning Community and How to Best Respond to the Suicide Bereft Within Higher Education', further engages with experiences of loss in Higher Education, looking at the experiences of practitioners and students in the Uk, reflecting my keen interest in issues of inclusion, grief and trauma within higher education settings.

Teaching interests

As part of my role as a Doctoral Teaching Assistant, I support teaching on a variety of modules on the BA Education programme, particularly the modules 'Gender and Difference' and 'Wellbeing and Education'. 

Research interests

I am interested in the following areas of research:

Experiences of grief and loss within Higher Education

Experiences of trauma within Higher Education

Feminist approaches to inclusion within education

Issues of equality and social justice within Higher Education

Auto/ethnographical methodologies