Category / Research themes

Reporting back from the BSA Auto/Biography Christmas Conference!

conferences

“I say tomato, You say tomato”. Is Autoethnography Auto/Biography by any other name?

Prior to our holiday break, Dr Judith Chapman and Dr Sarah Collard presented their research at the recent British Sociological Association (BSA) Auto/Biography Conference in London. This was a novel presentation, not limited to following a power point, but involving discussions with one other and the audience about the differences between the two research methods of autoethnography and auto/biography.

As they recently presented on this topic at the Centre for Qualitative Research lunchtime seminar, Judith and Sarah felt warmed up for the conversation and debates that occurred when presenting and discussing the topic in front of an audience of methodological experts within this area! After each shared their own experiences of conducting either authethnography or auto/biography, they opened it up to the audience to debate the merits of the two methods. An exciting and interesting dialogue with the audience ensued, with the ethical considerations of each method being fervently discussed, as well as the challenges of deciding what can be classified as autoethnography or auto/biography. There was no lull in the exchange of views and conference members applauded the informative and interactive element of our presentation.

After our presentation, we were able to forge links with others at the conference and were requested to share our work even more! It was very exciting to be so well received and have such a positive response to the presentation. However, there was no overall consensus and we agreed to differ on the syllabic emphasis of “tomato”!

First 2017 publication by CMMPH academics

open access, Publishing, writing

Yesterday saw the publication of the paper  ‘Antenatal care trial interventions: a systematic scoping review and taxonomy development of care models’, which is the first paper this year for the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)  [1].    The paper is based on a cross-UK collaboration led by Dr. Andrew Symon from the University of Dundee which is published in the Open Access journal BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth.  This is the second paper from this collaboration, the first one ‘Midwifery-led antenatal care models: Mapping a systematic review to an evidence-based quality framework to identify key components & characteristics of care ‘ was published last year [2].

symon-taxonomy-2017The latest BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth paper is a first step in establishing a taxonomy of antenatal care models.  The article concludes that interventions can be defined and described in many ways. The intended antenatal care population group proved the simplest and most clinically relevant way of distinguishing trials which might otherwise be categorised together. Since our review excluded non-trial interventions, the taxonomy does not represent antenatal care provision worldwide. It offers a stable and reproducible approach to describing the purpose and content of models of antenatal care which have been tested in a trial. perhaps key is that the paper highlights a lack of reported detail of trial interventions and usual care processes.

Our paper provides a baseline for future work to examine and test the salient characteristics of the most effective models, and could also help decision-makers and service planners in planning implementation.

Moreover we look forward to conducting more research as part of this exciting collaboration in midwifery and maternity care.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen & Prof. Vanora Hundley

CMMPH

 

References:

  1. Symon, A., Pringle, J., Downe, S., Hundley, V., Lee, E., Lynn, F., McFadden, A., McNeill, J., Renfrew, M., Ross-Davie, M., van Teijlingen, E., Whitford, H., Alderdice, F. (2017) Antenatal care trial interventions: a systematic scoping review and taxonomy development of care models BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 17:8 http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-1186-3
  2. Symon, A., Pringle, J., Cheyne, H., Downe, S., Hundley, V., Lee, E., Lynn, F., McFadden, A., McNeill, J., Renfrew, M., Ross-Davie, M., van Teijlingen, E., Whitford, H, Alderdice, F. (2016) Midwifery-led antenatal care models: Mapping a systematic review to an evidence-based quality framework to identify key components & characteristics of care, BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 16: 168 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/16/168

New blog on Open Access publishing

international, open access, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

authoraid-2016Some months ago Andy Nobes asked my colleague Prof. Padam Simkhada and I if we could write a blog about why we had so many papers in freely available online journals in Nepal.  Andy is the Programme Officer, Research Development & Support at INASP, which is an international development charity based in Oxford working with a global network of partners in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

We had a whole range of immediate answers to Andy’s question, including ones like: we both love Nepal; we are on the editorial board of a few journals that are part of the NepJOL group; and editors invite us to submit articles and/or editorials. Moreover, we feel reasons for Open Access publishing are very similar to our key reasons for working in a low-income country like Nepal. These principles are (a) conducting applied academic research in low-income countries for the greater good; (b) helping to build research-capacity; and (c) telling the world about our research through quality academic publications.  This week saw the publication of our blog ‘Publishing in journals of the NepJOL family’ on the AuthorAid website, click here to read the post.

Edwin van Teijlingen, Professor of Reproductive Health Research at Bournemouth University and Padam Simkhada, Professor of International Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University and BU Visiting Faculty.

Top three most accessed 2016 paper BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth

international, open access, Publishing, writing

bmc-media-luce-et-alIt is always nice to receive some good news just before Christmas.  The journal BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth informed us that our paper ‘“Is it realistic?” the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media’ was in the top three most popular papers [1].  This interdisciplinary paper crosses the boundaries between the study of maternity care & midwifery, sociology of health & illness, and that of the media.  With BU’s Dr. Ann Luce as first author, it is one of the top three accessed articles of nearly 400 articles published in 2016 (as of Dec 16th).     

 

Reference:

  1. Luce, A., Cash, M., Hundley, V., Cheyne, H., van Teijlingen, E., Angell, C., (2016) “Is it realistic?” the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 16: 40 http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-0827-x

The Personal in Research

I am starting researching and writing up my new book Heroism, Celebrity and Therapy in Nurse Jackie under contract with Routledge, and thinking about the notion of representation and therapeutic potentials, as this is a key aspect of the book. The lead character of Nurse Jackie within the TV series (played by the wonderful Edie Falco), offers a therapeutic representation of the ‘other’, as a heroine who whilst flawed through her addiction to prescription drugs, may be considered as a vulnerable outsider trying to find her way in a complicated world. Her representation inevitably means something to a whole range of audiences who might not only find entertainment in her performances, but also might think though personal aspects of vulnerably, culpability, morality and self-worth.

With this in mind, I recall the time when I was about to be awarded the contract for the book. In June this year I was on my way back from an international conference. I had turned up early at Chicago O’Hare Airport, getting there at 6.30 am, and then found out that the flight was delayed for 13 hours. Much frustration as you can imagine. With so much time on my hands, I knew that I could make use of this and work on the book proposal in the working areas of the airport, fine tuning the details. As I moved from one work station to the other (for various reasons of interruption) over the domain of airport, in one break/shift I wandered into a newsagent, and the latest edition of People magazine caught my eye. The cover depicted the recent shootings in Orlando Florida, at the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) night club Pulse, where a gunman had murdered 49 people – which occurred just a week or so before. The cover image offered a collage of the many people lost in the shooting. I purchased the magazine, and read through the article thinking about all the loss.  As part of this I reflected on a moment earlier on the trip when I had spoken publicly at the Consoling Passions Conference in Notre Dame, Indiana.  I had contributed to an informal event, allowing individuals to share emotional responses to the events in Orlando.   Almost unconsciously I had found myself speaking up at the conference, critiquing some of the mainstream news coverage of Orlando that seemed to be ranking the value of LGBT lives. Added to this even earlier in the trip when I had spoken publicly about HIV/AIDS activist Pedro Zamora at my book launch of his biography in San Francisco, the question of how to respond to Orlando was raised by the journalists that interviewed me, making me think of what this might mean to Pedro as a Latino from Miami himself – if he were alive today.

Later back in the Airport and now on the flight home, as there were no ‘watchable’ movies – I turned to the music on my IPhone, and ambivalently selected Christina Aguilera’s and Ricky Martins ‘Nobody wants to be Lonely’ followed by the Communard’s ‘For a Friend’. The former being a Latino up beat dance number with a laconic twist, and the latter being a melancholic piano based tribute penned by Jimmy Somerville and Richard Coles in memorial of LGBT activist Mark Ashton who passed away in 1987, after illness attributed to HIV/AIDS (who happens to be the main lead political character in the film Pride (2015)). These songs made me feel incredibly emotional, thinking about the loss of the optimistic nightclub goers at Pulse in Orlando that were out celebrating their individuality and their sense of belonging, who like Mark Ashton had their lives cut short.

Flash forward a few months to today, I note that the new video from John Legend of his song ‘Love me Now’ features a depiction of people that survived the massacre in Orlando, besides representing individuals who have survived catastrophic events in Northern Iraq, Puerto Rico and a reservation in North Dakota. Such a blending of human struggles, framing issues of peril, vulnerability and innocence, rekindle all those feelings and reflections that seemed so vivid back on that trip in June.

Contemporary media in diverse forms such as print, video and drama, offer a place of popular cultural identification, that on the one hand seems ephemeral, mass produced and transient, whilst on the other offers ways of feeling, identifying and thinking through. This is particularly relevant for Nurse Jackie, where the central character is an outsider to the norm, who attempts to find her way in life, offering a therapeutic vision, where individuals might relate to her thinking through their own sense of isolation and at points dysfunction or rejection, on life’s journey. In working on this book, I will think not only of all the therapeutic potential of that particular text and its meaning in popular culture, but also think about the wider meaning of research framed within the personal, and our goals or aspirations.

In a similar manner that representations of those lost at the Pulse night club in Orlando back in June, offers a sense of sadness, loss and eternal memory/feeling, we progress within our research not only reflecting back, but also looking forward. In the manner that I look back on my time in reworking my book proposal on Nurse Jackie on that trip back in June, emotion is the driver of research, allowing us to make connections that might seem personal, but also are political. It’s not necessarily how we distance ourselves from our research that is central or imperative, rather it is the ability to move from one space to another, making connections as much as building bridges.

Christopher Pullen