About

Jane Speedy

Born in London, Jane lives & works in and between Bristol, South West England and St Davids, South West Wales, UK.

​When she took early retirement  from her job as Professor of Education at the University of Bristol, after having suffered a stroke, she went to Bristol School of Art and undertook a degree in fine art - thus making an opportunity out of what could have been a disaster. Jane’s artful inquiry into surviving her stroke ‘Staring at the park was published in 2015.

Jane still participates in scholarly collaborative writing activities with CANI-net (the independent network of collaborative artful scholars and artists) . She has also continued to co-edit a series of books that comprise collaborative inquiry collections that seamlessly move between visual and written texts. The latest of these:

Artful collaborative inquiry was published by Routledge in 2021. Jane has co-authored a similarly collaborative and artful text with her friend and colleague, Bronwyn Davies from Sydney, Australia: ‘The arts of living in a more-than-human world’. (DIO Press) Bronwyn and Jane have since continued this writing partnership by publishing Two women walking along an emergent edge (Routledge) in 2026. Both these books were written from a partnership that began during the pandemic. They have been juxtaposing and charting their journeys in different parts of the world ever since.

As well as her engagement with scholarship and education, Jane  now lives and works as a painter, part-time in the rural Pembrokeshire city of St Davids (smallest city in Europe, population: 1300) and part-time in the more  urban English city of Bristol. (population c.700,000).

​Recent Art Education: 

2013-4, RWA drawing school, 'experimental drawing' with Esme Clutterbuck.

2014-7, Bristol School of Art, B.A. in fine art, first class honours.

2021-3 Turps banana correspondence course for painters.

Other Education:

BA (History) University of York 1976/ PGCE, Leeds 1978/ Diploma (Counselling) London 1981/ MSc (Counselling) Bristol 1992/ PhD (Bristol) 2000.

 Exhibitions:

2015,’chequered histories', Edwardian cloakroom gallery, Bristol.

2016 'Movement', Centre Space gallery, Bristol.

2016, RWA Open exhibition, Bristol.

2017, 'Emergence': joint exhibition with Sally Coulden,Centre Space gallery, Bristol. 

2018, ‘Wedding Flowers’, solo exhibition, Morden Hall, London.

2023, North Bristol Art trail (open studios),

Books, relevant articles and media:

Speedy, J. (2008) Narrative inquiry and psychotherapy, London: Palgrave/Macmillan.

Speedy, J and Wyatt, J. (2014) (Eds) Creative Practitioner Inquiry, Brill, Rotterdam.

Speedy, J and Wyatt, J (2014) Collaborative writing as inquiry, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.

Speedy, J (2015) "Staring at the Park', Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Ellie Pitt, (2015) Interviews and Review of 'Chequered histories' exhibition, Bristol, Made in Bristol TV.

Speedy, J (2017) Painting is/as a thin place, Bristol: Blurb publications. 

Bishopston Voice (December 2017) Review of 'emergence' exhibition. Bristol

Kirkpatrick, D; Porter, S; Speedy, J and Wyatt, J. (2021) . Artful collaborative Inquiry , London:Routledge.

Davies, B. and Speedy, J. (2024) The Arts of living in a more than human world. Lewes, DE. DIO Press