Location: Canterbury

Email: michelle.crowther1@canterbury.ac.uk or health.librarian@canterbury.ac.uk

Twitter: @HumLib_cccu and @HealthLib_cccu

Profile summary

I am the Learning & Research Librarian for Humanities, Language Studies and Applied Linguistics, and job share the role of Learning and Research Librarian for Medicine, Health and Social Care with Kate Davies.

I studied a BA (Hons) in Renaissance and Modern History at the University of Warwick and as a student spent my summers teaching English as a foreign language. In 1992, I began working as a graduate library trainee at Chester College of Higher Education (now the University of Chester), before embarking on an MLib in Information and Library studies at the University of Wales (Aberystwyth).

After two years working as Assistant County Reference Librarian on the Isle of Wight, I arrived at Canterbury Christ Church in 1996, where I have been pretty much ever since in various guises.

I am a chartered member of CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

From 2011-13, I studied the MA in Creative Writing at Canterbury Christ Church and have worked on several life writing projects. I enjoy empowering others to document their lives. I am currently studying a PhD in English Literature looking at manuscript magazine culture in Canterbury in the late Victorian period.

I am interested in local history and heritage and have worked as a freelance creative facilitator for Canterbury Museums facilitating object-handling and interpretation events. I am co-lead on the Kent Digital Maps project.

Conference activities

Embedding information skills workshops into the Arts and Humanities Foundation programme. London and South East ALDinHE Regional Event - Friday 16th June 2017. Models of academic skills provision and delivery in different HEIs/LD and its place in HE. Lightning Talk.

Who is significant? Writing biography by looking at the gaps. English and Creative Writing Research Forum. CCCU. 24 January 2018.

Literary fortunes and misfortunes: a romp through 1920s and 1930s fiction held in the Canterbury Christ Church University Library. International Centre for Victorian Women Writers: From Bronte to Bloomsbury Fifth International Conference: Reassessing women's writing of the 1920s and 1930s. 16-17 July 2018.

If you see the wonder of a fairy tale. University of Greenwich Teach Meet - Thursday 13th December 2018. Collaborative approaches to teaching and learning: engaging students as managers of their own learning. Pecha Kucha.

331.11423 - Graduate Attributes: developing synergies between Arts and Humanities students and the Library. Partners in Learning Conference. CCCU. 24 January 2019.

Persistently scribbling: the literary ambitions of Canterbury's elite in the 1870s. Digital Map Symposium: 19th century and neo-Victorian. CCCU. 4 February 2019.

Each doing a little much would be accomplished' Elizabeth Fry and her benefactors crowd-funding libraries nineteenth century style. CILIP LIHG. John Rylands Library. 22 June 2019.

Building a sense of belonging. Closing the Gap: World Café. CCCU. 7 August 2020.

Castles in the Air: the Canterbury Persistent Scribblers Society. Digital Map Symposium. CCCU. 5 May 2021.

Partnership working to support dissertation students during the pandemic: a case study of work with theology and religion, philosophy and ethics students. Teaching and Learning Conference. CCCU. 24 June 2021.

The Persistent Scribbler Society: Canterbury 1875-1878. The Centre for Kent History and Heritage Talks. Canterbury Festival. 27 October 2021.

“In the dancing light of an intellectual gaze” Women’s manuscript magazine culture in late Victorian Britain as an expression of self. Female Identities in Nineteenth-Century British and Spanish Literature. International Centre for Victorian Women Writers. Canterbury. 1 December 2021.

How to live cheaply at the seaside: the Kent coast as writer's retreat. Digital Map Symposium. CCCU. 26 May 2022.

'Obscurity is not empty but thick with the star dust of innumerable lives': my journey on the road to recovery: assigning significance to the works of writers that history has chosen to forget. Faculty Research and Enterprise Day. 30 June 2022.

'and memory, however sad, is the best and purest link between this world and a better': name-dropping in obituaries: the cult of knowing Dickens. Dickens Society Symposium. 8-10 July 2022.

Publications

'Walking the path of desire: evaluating a blended learning approach to developing study skills in a multi-disciplinary group' Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education 14 (2019) https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/475/pd:

'Out of the archive: Elizabeth Fry: reform by reading' International Centre for Victorian Women Writers Newsletter 11 (2019) https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-and-humanities/school-of-humanities/docs/May-2019-Newsletter.pdf

'Out of the archive: Did Juliana Horatia Ewing influence a generation of African writers?' International Centre for Victorian Women Writers Newsletter 20 (2020) https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-and-humanities/school-of-humanities/docs/may-2020-newsletter.pdf

Crowther, M. (2023) 'Price [married name James], Florence Alice [pseud. Florence Warden]', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000380821

Crowther, M. (2023) 'Tuttiett, Mary Gleed [pseud. Maxwell Gray]', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000382400

Blog Posts

Blistering barnacles and thundering typhoons - https://blogs.canterbury.ac.uk/library/blistering-barnacles-and-thundering-typhoons-the-language-of-captain-haddock/

Half-Hours in the far North - https://blogs.canterbury.ac.uk/library/half-hours-in-the-far-north/

Podcasts

'Interview with Michelle Crowther on how libraries and librarians support research' PhDTalk. 3 Feb 2021.

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Related events

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Academic Success Session - Medway