Fiona Frank

Fiona Frank’s PhD was an oral history study looking at the transmission of Scottish Jewish identity through five generations of a Scottish Jewish family. As Ronald Grele writes, oral testimonies are only one part of finding out about the past: ‘where written sources are available, they should be used as background as well as corroboration’.1
This paper examines the various archival sources which provided background and context for the research. Focusing on the archival material allows an understanding of how the material itself contributed further to the understanding of the lives of the family members. A dogged interest in examining data from many sources, plus some unexpected synchronicity, led to some surprising material and some unexpected directions in the research.

Responses from more than 400 British adults who withdrew from part-time vocational and nonvocational further education courses revealed that withdrawal was due to a combination of reasons, more than 60% unrelated to the course or college. College-based reasons included the tutor or teaching methods. Students insisted that they not be labeled "dropouts." (SK)

Frank, Fiona "I Always Felt On The Edge Of Things And Not Really Part Of It": Fuzzy Boundaries In An Extended Scottish Jewish Family. Boundaries, Identity and belonging in Modern Judaism. Routledge. 2016: 162-176.  https://archive.jpr.org.uk/object-uk341

This essay celebrates the life and art of Glasgow artist Hannah Frank whose Jewish journey took her from the traditional Gorbals tenement where she was born in 1908 to the Newton Mearns Jewish care home where she died in December 2008. This short physical journey formed only pan of what was a substantially larger intellectual and cultural journey which took Frank through the canon of English and European literature, poetry and art, theatre and cinema. This essay uses Rank's diaries from 1924 and 1925 to explore this larger journey, using examples to show how her reading would influence her art throughout her life.

Frank, Fiona "I Always Felt On The Edge Of Things And Not Really Part Of It": Fuzzy Boundaries In An Extended Scottish Jewish Family. In Diemling, Maria and Ray, Larry. Boundaries, Identity and belonging in Modern Judaism. Routledge. 2016: 162-176.  https://archive.jpr.org.uk/object-uk341

Rabbi Zvi David and Sophia Hoppenstein arrived in Edinburgh in the 1880s, and had nine children. Fiona Frank tracked down and interviewed their descendents throughout Scotland, England and as far as Cape Town, as part of her PhD research at the Scottish Oral History Centre, University of Strathclyde.
“This book is an important addition to the increasing literature on the history of the Jews in Scotland. Through the five generations studied every aspect of the Jewish experience in Scotland, integration and assimilation, Scottish and Jewish cultural identities, religious practice and secularisation, comes to vivid life." - Kenneth Collins, Chair of the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre

Designed to familiarize experienced and qualified basic skills tutors and coordinators with issues of teaching basic skills in the workplace in Great Britain, this course can be delivered by experienced workplace basic skills training program coordinators. It can be delivered over three days or as six half-day sessions. Each of the four units consists of a list of objectives, informational material, and exercises with suggestions for use. Unit 1, General Concepts of Workplace Basic Skills Training and Company Culture, addresses program name; adult basic education in the workplace context; differences between community- and workplace-based student groups; benefits and barriers to training; workplace reform; company culture; and cultural models. Unit 2, Making It Happen, covers training needs analysis, negotiating with a company, definitions of basic skills, steering group, and confidentiality. Unit 3, Setting It Up, concerns publicity, program outline, and delivery options. Unit 4, D...

In April 1992, 16 individuals who were all employed in manual or nonsupervisory jobs and who had all participated in employer-funded adult education courses offered partly or entirely during work hours attended a weekend retreat in the north of England. They spent the weekend talking and writing about their experiences with work-based learning, its effect on their lives, and the broader benefits of work-based education programs. This book presents the collected writings of the weekend program's participants. The writings are in various formats, including reports, essays, and poems. In the introductory section, two participants describe their involvement in workplace learning and its significance in their lives. The writings in chapters 1 and 2 describe typical workdays in the lives of service occupation and factory workers, and the poems and essays in chapter 3 focus on the participants' reasons for taking work-based adult education courses and the personal and career benefi...

This thesis casts new light on the immigrant experience, focusing on one extended Scottish Jewish family, the descendents of Rabbi Zvi David Hoppenstein and his wife Sophia, who arrived in Scotland in the early 1880s. Going further than other studies by exploring connections and difference through five generations and across five branches of the family, it uses grounded theory and a feminist perspective and draws on secondary sources like census data and contemporary newspaper reports with the early immigrant generations, oral testimony with the third and fourth generations and an innovative use of social networking platforms to engage with the younger generation. It explores Bourdieu’s theories relating to cultural and economic capital and the main themes are examined through the triple lens of generational change, gender and class. The thesis draws out links between food and memory and examines outmarriage and ‘return inmarriage’. It explores the fact that antisemitic and negative reactions from the host community, changing in nature through the generations but always present, have had an effect on people’s sense of their Jewish identity just as much as has the transmission of Jewish identity at home, in the synagogue, in Hebrew classes and in Jewish political, educational, leisure and welfare organisations. It makes an important link between gendered educational opportunities and consequent gendered intergenerational class shift, challenges other studies which view Jewish identity as static and illustrates how the boundary between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ is blurred: the Hoppenstein family offers us a context where we can see clearly how insider and outsider status can be self-assigned, ascribed by others, or mediated by internal gatekeepers.