Introduction: Well-being and Belonging

When we speak about well-being, the idea of belonging is central. A lack of well-being is very often closely connected with the lack of any sense of belonging, a sense of isolation. To belong is to know that there is a place where you do not have to earn your position as it is guaranteed. You are at home and you do not need to work to be there.

Belonging is a complex issue: we belong to our families, our faith communities, to our country and culture. Each of us lives in a tapestry of different layers of belonging and hence has different levels of motivations and visions. In this regard, religious communities with their life rhythms, routine and rituals shape and give a certain motivation and vision. This blog post examines the case of the Taize community and explores how this ecumenical monastic order in central France seeks to develop a sense of belonging within their community culture.

Taize Community in General

Founded in 1940 by Roger Schütz, a Reformed Protestant, the Taize community soon started to attract many young people. Today each year over 100,000 people visit Taize to share in the community’s way of life. Taize offers very basic things such as simple healthy food and shelter, praying three times a day, and volunteering work.

Different people join the community at different levels. Although the main administrative roles are on the brothers, the significant part of community life is organized and preserved by the male and female volunteers. Taize consists of different layers of community:

• Brothers (and some nuns)
• Volunteers (male and female)
• Pilgrims (male and female)
• Guest (church leaders, ministers)

Although there are different categories of people inside the community, all of them follow the same lifestyle and rule of life. The unwritten law of Taize is that if you are in the community, you are expected to pray with others and undertake work that sustains the community’s life (be it in the kitchen or church or gardening).

Worship Style at the Taize: Contemplative Music and Silence

The center of the community’s life is prayer organized three times a day. The prayer services are primarily contemplative songs that are sung over and over again like waves crashing over the congregation. To get a taste of what this sounds like, try one of these.

• Tu Sei Sorgente Viva

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYR7vtOk3-s

• Meine Hoffnung

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBmgOnQM3Ws

• Nothing can ever come

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmi3cD2zshg

• Laudemus Deum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDplBU-mCoU

• Jesus le Christ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqoYsauFa2I

• Bonum est confidere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPNzZwBYZrc

• Toi, l’au-delà de tout

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8cbNAwwQhU

Alongside music is silence which is kept for 7-10 minutes during each service. During the prayer songs, people stay silent. While there is no standard conceptualized theory what this practice of silence means, a visual and audio experience says to me that practicing silence at Taize fosters the power of listening by calming down the pressures of everyday life and prioritizes the listening/giving attention to over the speaking. While speaking can be regarded as self-reflection/expression, listening is about focus and attention. Practice of silence imagines the flourishing as spiritual and bodily focus (you do not move your eyes or mouth) and attention to one’s physical, social and spiritual conditions.

Taize and a Sense of Community

Taize creates a community with a setting. It marks off a piece of the earth, a village, puts boundaries around it and within their parameters performs certain practices that carry with them a story about what the good life looks like. While Taize is a religious organization, it is not primarily a belief system but first of all a community with its distinctive practices. Taize’s community vision is articulated as a ‘parable of community’. The community itself aims to reflect its parable of bringing different people of various strands of Christianity together. One of the keywords at Taize is trust. A community is formed once there is a basic trust between people. Contact with the other at Taize is pursued not from an individualistic end but the perspective of collective prayer and communal work. Unlike the urban environment where human connections are made primarily out of financial gain, social advancement or romantic love, Taize’s simple lifestyle, common prayer, and daily collective household projects naturally foster to form interdependent human relationships. The belonging and good life is imagined and enacted based on the basis of asking help and giving that help to others in a communal project.

Overall, the Taize community serves to foster well-being by way of looking into the depths of Christian tradition (common to all churches) to find there themes and motivations that reminds us we are responsible not just for immediate neighbors but our human brothers and sisters and the world in which we live.

Taize services are organized all over the Europe and North America. If you would like to attend of the services, contact the local church for the details.

If you would like to find out more about the Taize community, please visit their website: www.taize.fr

Arman Shokhikyan

PhD candidate,

Theology and Religious Studies Department

University of Notitngham

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‘Health and our Environment’: Health Humanities Conference 2020 Join us for the 2020 Health Humanities Conference held at the University of Nottingham. www.eventbrite.co.uk

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This summer Dr Jonathan Memel (@jgmemel) gave a fantastic talk for the third seminar of our 2019 series, where he drew on his personal experience (as a PhD student and early career researcher, Research Grant Writer, AHRC Cultural Engagement Fellow and now Research Fellow) to give some insights and advice into the world of academic applications from an Arts and Humanities perspective. We thought that it might be useful to summarise some of his pearls of wisdom here for you, so, grab a drink of your choice (I personally recommend tea) and settle in for a great read…

 First off, some context on the developing field of academia:

Funding within Higher Education is in general becoming less secure and continuous, often being subject to assessments such as REF/TEF, and student demand. Jobs within Higher Education are also increasingly precarious, with a tremendous growth in fixed-term and temporary contracts, and a decline in permanent positions.

In terms of funding, external grants are playing an increasingly large role within Higher Education, and there are a lot of resources and opportunities provided by some big sources, such as the AHRC (~£70m/ year), GCRF (£1.5bn/5 years) and the EU/Horizon 2020 (UK receives ~£8bn / 6 years).

The key criteria for funding projects are also shifting. Notably, collaboration is increasingly promoted, encouraging a team-based model of research (and therefore challenging the traditional concept of “the lone scholar” and single authored work). Impact is also ever more essential, especially for externally-funded projects. This is sometimes reflected by new postdoctoral roles emerging in teams such as “public engagement coordinator”. These can be great opportunities, but beware of the fact that many of the benefits of impact cannot be taken with you if you change to another institution (i.e. they are non-portable for REF), and so remember the value of continuing with your own research and/or being credited for research if you want to continue into academia.

Finally, for those entering mid-career and onwards (especially for those going into the more science-based fields), be aware that you are increasingly expected to demonstrate the ability to acquire funding. This is becoming an important criterion for some lectureships.

So, how do you get funding?

That is an excellent question, and one that Jonathan spent the rest of his talk addressing…

The art of grant writing

Despite having a lot of overlap, grant writing is different in many ways to academic writing in general. Although any academic writing requires you to persuade readers that your work is worth reading, this becomes even more of an art form for grants, since you are no longer in the comfort of your own field. For this reason, you MUST AVOID JARGON AND BE VERY CLEAR! Always bear in mind that you are writing for people who are, and are not, familiar with your area of expertise. Reviewers from other disciplines will ask “why does it matter?” and “what’s the payoff?” – so be sure to answer these questions clearly and persuasively. Sometimes it’s enough to say that ‘this has not been studied yet’ but be careful not to be overly reliant on this, as you still need to address why it should be studied (maybe it hadn’t previously been studied for a reason!). Equally, why should it be studied now? Timeliness (such as important anniversaries or new material becoming available) is always a crowd-pleaser, since it helps to answer the “why now” question, but there are many ways to emphasise the significance of your work.

Jonathan then proceeded to give us even more of a helping hand, by suggesting a rough structure for a successful application.

1. Set the scene by outlining that in some way, `we have a problem’ – this can then dictate your research question(s) and gives evidence that your project is important. Remember that this isn’t a literature review: only mention other work if it helps to support ‘the problem’.
2. Position your project as `the solution’ – and remember to answer why you are the best person or team to address “the problem”.
3. Be specific about what your project involves, as reviewers want to know how the funding will be used. State what will be done, how (e.g. what is your method/means of analysis?), when will you do things (what is your timetable and timeframe?), who will do what (i.e. if a team project, who are the team members and what will they each bring to the project?), and what resources you have (e.g. regarding data and contacts)? In sum: state the how, what, who and when?
4. Also detail how your findings will be disseminated, and any impact that your research will have.

Finally, Jonathan offered some fantastic tips and warnings for early career researchers. We’ve outlined the key ones here for you below:

• Go Big or Go Home – this is as common for more senior researchers, but it’s easy to fritter away your time on smaller proposals that require a lot of effort, yet do not necessarily pay off in terms of time to conduct research. Remember, your priority as an ECR is having your time paid for: be protective about this. Basically, have the confidence to go for bigger grants and value your time!
• Play the Percentage Game – research the success rates for different grants and gain an idea of the profiles of successful candidates/projects so that you spend your effort on applications that are viable for you. Be cautious, and ask: will your time be reimbursed? Is your position written into the proposal?
• Recycle – the trick to success is to persist (but in a time effective way). Many successful applications were previously rejected elsewhere, so rejection certainly does not mean that your ideas are undeserving of funding – redraft and recycle your proposals.
• Institutional support – don’t underestimate the value of an institution and its academic staff backing you and your project. For some schemes, such as the Leverhulme ECR, this is essential to the selection process. More generally, support will enable you to better embed your proposal in the research culture of the institution(s) (i.e. when applying for a postdoc) and may lead to other opportunities. Be warned that institutional research support teams are often orientated around large grants for which they can claim overheads and indirect costs: all of which are uncommon for early-career grants. The institution’s main incentive to support your individual postdoctoral fellowship proposal will instead be your future contribution to research culture and prestige. Prioritize relationships with academics in post, who should see the value of your work, particularly if it is framed in relation to their own approach to research.
• Balance with publications – don’t get too carried away with funding applications and projects. Publications are critical to getting your next job, so balance your time. Consider taking a more secure academic-related job if it will allow you to focus on publications and make you more competitive.
• Support each other – when you leave the PhD you realise that you weren’t doing it alone: suddenly there’s no mentor, formal support structure, or review process. Try to imitate this kind of support with your peers, perhaps by swapping work and being writing buddies…

We are incredibly grateful to Dr Jonathan Memel for giving such an insightful and valuable perspective on postgrad/ECR life and the art that is writing funding proposals.

Finally, please remember that one of the support networks for you during your PhD and beyond as an early career researcher is through this group. We welcome any and all contributions – in the form of sharing research ideas, discussions on postgrad/ECR life, suggestions for the group and more – so please do get in touch with our team if you have any questions or ideas.

With best wishes,

The Early Bird Researcher Group Team

Nottingham Health Humanities

Frances Cadd, School of Humanities (frances.cadd@nottingham.ac.uk)
Mathilde Vialard, School of Health Sciences (mathilde.vialard2@nottingham.ac.uk)
Emma Putland, School of English (emma.putland@nottingham.ac.uk)
Dr Colin Wright, School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies (colin.wright@nottingham.ac.uk)

Twitter: @HealthHumanEBR  

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Gabriele Neher reports on the Image and Narrative: Illness, Recovery, Change (#illnessrecoverychange) workshop that was run by the Health Humanities at the University of Nottingham, on Monday 29 April 2019.

 Graphics by www.penmendonca.com @MendoncaPen.

The best way to talk about Image and Narrative is to let an image do the talking: this report includes artwork created by Penelope (Pen) Mendonca (Central St. Martins), artist, graphic facilitator and researcher. Pen was one of the participants who contributed to the Image and Narrative: Illness, Recovery, Change (#illnessrecoverychange) one-day workshop at the University of Nottingham in April. Pen observed the day and created the two artworks/ records that illustrate this report on a complex, rich and lovely day of storytelling and exploring. Contributions ranged from ‘standard’ conference papers (you know, the ones with power points and scripted notes) to the recounting of lived experiences of illness, to Caren Garfen showcasing some of her exquisitely rendered work, particularly from her Room for Improvement project. Caren’s work requires minute and close attention and is best viewed in conversation – essentially the entire day focussed on the important role played by narrative and stories, both as narrator shaping the stories but also as the listener/viewer experiencing the stories. Stories make sense of experiences – so understanding how illness impacts on the art of telling stories, how stories about illness are shaped by words and images, and exploring the dangers associated with creating dominant stories and sharing experiences, was what brought all the various strands of the debate together. Several of the contributors also explored questions around the dangers of storytelling and the creating of ‘false’ narratives. It should be remembered that this workshop followed on a previous workshop in January 2019 with a particular focus on creativity.

The day opened with a keynote paper, by Susan Hogan, Cultural Studies and Art Therapy, University of Derby) and Eve Wood (videographer) (https://blog.derby.ac.uk/2017/03/seven-reasons-women-take-art-giving-birth/), who introduced The Birth Project as an example of the AHRC-funded investigation, Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery. The Birth Project underlined the significance of creative practice and storytelling with regards to recovery from traumatic birth experiences and as a way of providing the women affected with a means to enhance their mental health and wellbeing. Throughout, it interrogated embedded assumptions about the experience of birth and expectations surrounding it. The project set out to answer such questions as: do healthcare institutions create unintentional illnesses by their medical practices? It tested assumptions and explored subjective experiences of birth and transition to motherhood, and thereby paved the way to a panel dedicated to the exploration of personal experiences of illness beyond birth.

The debate focussed on online peer support, explored aspects of dementia and interrogated the lived experiences of a young woman with Downs Syndrome and her mother. Have a look at how Pen Mendonca captured the frustrations of being denied a voice and being pigeonholed! It explored experiences, focused on words and reminded us of the importance of clear and inclusive words and images.

The day did much to bring different types of narratives together. In the morning panel, which  focused on ‘personal expressions’, Serena Cox (Health Sciences) gave insight into ‘Traumatic Birth Experiences and Online Peer Support’; Emma Putland (English) explored ‘Other People’s Personal Responses to Media Portrayals of Dementia’; Emily and Sarah Smith celebrated ‘World Down Syndrome Day’ with an exploration of ‘Upside-down Language’; Hana Jafar (English, University of Manchester) gave insights into the use of poetry to ‘Articulate, Communicate and Understand Disordered Eating in Men’; and Mark Pearson (Health Sciences) discussed ‘Surviving my Storytelling’. In the afternoon panel, which was concerned with ‘collective representations’, Joy Llewellyn-Beardsley (Health Sciences) outlined ‘The Nine Dimensions of Mental Health Recovery Narratives’; Max Western (Behavioural Science, University of Bath) introduced ‘Visual Feedback and Health Behaviour Change’; Kevin Harvey (English) explored ‘Stock Images of Dementia’; and Frances Cadd (History) presented ‘Remedying Malaise through Performative Protest: A Case Study of Interwar Nurses’ Health’. Delegates could also choose one of two very different forms of ‘application’: Sue Hopcroft (Centre for Advanced Studies) gave advice regarding ‘Funding and Support’ whilst Elvira Perez Vallejos (Digital Technology and Mental Health) encouraged participation in her ‘Flamenco-Yoga’ workshop.

In parallel to the stimulating programme of talks and discussions a separate session was run as part of Heike Bartel’s ‘Hungry for Words’ project. Together with the animation team Woven Ink, the hands-on workshop gathered stories of male eating disorders from six men with lived experience and started to turn their experiences into an animated training video aimed at GPs, @ConsiderMaleEDs. Isolde Godfrey and Jess Harvey from Woven Ink also gave insight into their work and the role of animation to tell stories of trauma, illness, survivorship and health in the final plenary session for all participants.

What came through loud and clear throughout this successful and stimulating day was the importance of making every story matter.

It is good to talk. It is also good to listen.

 Graphics by www.penmendonca.com @MendoncaPen.

Event coordinators: Mark Pearson, Emma Putland, Jonathan Memel, Heike Bartel

With special thanks to the Health Humanities Research Priority Area (RPA) for funding this project, and to all of the administrative staff for their valuable help and time, especially Michael Timmins (Web and Digital Officer, Faculty of Arts), and Claire Moody (Senior Administrator for Operations and Finance).

This discussion of how digital, visual and textual representation can support health is ongoing. If you are interested in or have been affected by this topic and would like to be involved, please contact a member of the organizing team (listed above) at their Nottingham email address.

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Angela Woods, from Durham University came to the University of Nottingham on April 10, 2019, to discuss her project ‘Hearing the Voice’, an eight-year interdisciplinary study of voice-hearing currently funded by a Wellcome Trust Humanities and Social Sciences Collaborative Award.

On this occasion, Angela Woods presented a riveting account of the work she started in 2012 with a team of academics from anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, history, linguistics, literary studies, medical humanities, philosophy, psychology and theology.

She opened her talk on the central question of “what is it like to hear voices?” and the dozens of possible answers to this question, with descriptions ranging from ‘resonant voices,’ or ‘organ voices,’ to ‘voices of spirit.’ Some voice-hearers experience voices which speak softly, others without words; some voices express judgment, while others have an agency of their own.  

Making sense of these statements, which are taken from patients in clinical interviews, is what the academic community strives to do, focusing on the personification of the experience of hearing voices.

In her talk, Woods focused first on this question of personification, the possible attribution of human form to the voice heard, its specific traits, intentions, agency or emotions. Research also focuses on the cognitive approach and the perceived power of the voices over the patient, which often tell them what to do.

Woods furthermore talked about the therapeutic effect of making sense of the voices, to help patients to normalise their experience and to make it into something we accept.

The presentation then took a closer look at the project itself, which involves participants, aged between 16 and 85 years old, who have entered the services within the last nine months. Angela Woods stressed that very few participants have been diagnosed with any clinical mental health disorder.

The interdisciplinary study focuses on the trajectories of the experience, the different patterns that can be identified, but more importantly on the patient’s own impression of the experience. To make sense of the variety of experiences—some have visual, olfactory or tactile hallucinations associated with the voices, while others identify the voices as coming from specific parts of their bodies—the team uses corpus linguistics, a methodical approach relying on large data, in order to compare words used by patients to describe their experience.     

The presentation finally centered around one of the patients, Leah—a fictional name—whose personal experience had particularly struck Angela Woods. Leah had lead a particularly difficult life, struggling with family and financial difficulties, mental health troubles and instances of assault while living on the street. She started using the services after realising she was hearing voices, which sounded like “actual people,” or which were associated with the figure of the archangel Michael or that of the Demon. She identified the voices as coming from different parts of her body, but located them as coming from her heart during the most difficult and challenging moments of her life. The voices, she explained, acted as protective shadows, entreating her to move to a safer place when she was in danger.

Woods explained that using a corpus based approach helped the team identify what was most important, through the study of the language used to recount this story. This method showed the distinct features of Leah’s narrative, the different entities associated to the voices, and the different ways of describing them. This, Angela Woods explained, help us understand what happens when the voice speaks.

Hearing about Angela Woods’ project, and Leah’s incredible life story was a compelling experience, and we are extremely grateful to her for coming to Nottingham to tell us about the ‘Hearing the Voice’ project.

You can find more information about ‘Hearing the Voice’ here https://hearingthevoice.org/about-the-project/

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Those that are familiar with the East Midlands are sure to have heard the local friendly greeting ‘ay up me duck’, but perhaps we should be swapping one avian for another and saying ‘ay up me Nightingale’ to commemorate this infamous nurse’s Derbyshire connections.

Dr Richard Bates and Frances Cadd, PhD, from the AHRC funded project ‘Florence Nightingale Comes Home for 2020’, were delighted to have the opportunity to talk about the founder of modern nursing’s little-known East Midlands connections at History Festival 2019, held by the University of Nottingham on 10 April 2019.

The festival was a public event which brought together all history enthusiasts, whether they be staff, students or members of the wider community, for an enthralling day of history themed interactive workshops for knowledge sharing and development.‘Nurses and Nightingales’ was amongst a diverse array of workshops on history across the world and centuries. The session introduced the ‘Florence Nightingale Comes Home for 2020’ interdisciplinary research project, which investigates the influences of Nightingale’s Derbyshire connections on her professional and literary life through historico-literary analysis.

‘Florence Nightingale – Her First Patient’, Chatterbox, C.1860. Nightingale depicted as a child at her family’s country home, Lea Hurst, in Matlock, Derbyshire, bandaging an injured local sheepdog.

However, that Nightingale was a local seems to be largely unknown to the regional community. The inquisitive audience discovered that the Nightingale’s were a Derbyshire family who kept a holiday home, Lea Hurst, in the village of Lea in Matlock. Florence spent much of her childhood at Lea Hurst. It was also the site from which she left to nurse in the Crimean War in 1854 and that which she returned to in 1856.

Dr Bates led a ‘myth busting quiz’ which aimed to separate some of the facts from the fiction that surrounds Nightingale’s legacy and image, both in her personal convictions and in her professional achievements. For example, did you know that Nightingale was an exceptionally good statistician? She developed her own polar area graphs to reflect the death rate in Crimea at a time when statistics was a new field. In addition, contrary to popular belief, Nightingale was in favour of the movement for women’s suffrage but did not actively support the campaign. She believed suffrage for women was not something that could be achieved in her lifetime – which turned out to be correct! Instead, she chose to channel her energies and efforts into economic rights for women believing these were more obtainable in the political and social milieu of nineteenth-century Britain.

‘Asylum Strikers Ejected’, Gloucester Journal, 22 April 1922. A newspaper article describing one of the first ever nursing strikes in British history. In 1922, male and female nurses at Radcliffe Asylum, Nottingham, protested their reduced pay and longer working hours. Nearly all were dismissed and replaced.

After some successful myth busting Frances then explored some of the stereotypes of nurses and nursing with the group. An insightful discussion pursued around the question: ‘what is a nurse?’, which revealed many of the persistent assumptions commonly held about nurses. The unrealistic portrayal of nurses as ‘ministering angels’ or ‘battle-axes’ was then interrogated by the group through a diverse range of primary sources which depict nurses and nursing from the nineteenth-century until the present day. A particularly salient debate emerged around the idea of nursing as a ‘vocation’ and how this impacts the expectations we have of nurses and the conditions under which they work. For example, were all nurses ‘born nurses’ or did some enter the work for economic benefits or social mobility? In addition, how far did the belief that a strong dedication and commitment to helping others would alone drive nurses to stay in the profession contribute to issues such as low pay or excessive working hours? Although these questions had a historical focus, the group found that they held much resonance today, appreciating how the past can be used to better understand dynamics and attitudes around contemporary nursing.

The conversations, debates and ideas that emerged from the workshop around the history and politics of nursing were immensely gratifying in that they provided much food for thought, for both future research and contemporary discussion around this invaluable profession.

We are looking forward to History Festival 2020 where we can hopefully build on these crucial questions with equal enthusiasm and success!

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‘For researchers, historians, midwives and childbearing women and families, it is vital that we are able to understand and explore our history from a range of sources.’

In this guest blog post Nicky Grace, PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham, summarises her wonderful presentation on her exciting Archiving Midwifery project which she gave at our first seminar on 20 March 2019. Nicky would appreciate any feedback and advice on her bid proposal to ensure its success, so please do feel free to contribute any ideas in the comment section of this blog!

I was honoured to have the opportunity to talk to the Health Humanities Early Bird Research Group on 20 March 2019 about the ‘Archiving Midwifery’ project. This blog outlines the points I made in my presentation, beginning with some background about me and the rationale for the project, and ending with a brief description of a bid I made for ‘seedcorn’ funding. The funding was a small amount of money that had become available through the Health Humanities group in Nottingham to help ‘earlybird’ research projects get off the ground. Though the bid was unsuccessful, the bidding process was helpful as a way of firming up the vision for Archiving Midwifery, and for drawing together a team that will hopefully go on to make further successful funding bids so that the vision of a national midwifery archive can eventually become reality.

My background  

I’m currently undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing. The main focus of my PhD is a memoir which explores the personal and social meanings of midwifery and birth. As part of my PhD I am also researching and writing a critical piece on life writing about women’s and midwives’ experiences of birth.

My first degree was in English, but I subsequently trained as a midwife and I have a Masters degree in Research Methods in Health. From that time (2011) I have been very involved with clinical research and I am also a practising midwife.

Why does my background matter for the Archiving Midwifery Project? My experiences as a midwife and as a researcher and creative writer have led me to believe that it is vital there is a means of storing in a way that is accessible – archiving – material related to midwifery and birth. There are two reasons for this belief.

Rationale for the Archiving Midwifery project

The first reason is that we need to build a repository of material that already exists, but which is currently scattered and not easily accessible even to the most determined of scholars. Such material includes historical midwifery records; birth and death records; journals of midwives and women; and other original source material that provides evidence about historical midwifery and birth practices. We know there is a great deal of such material sitting in boxes in the attics and under the beds of amateur or even professional midwifery historians, currently without a home.

The second reason is even more dynamic and is to do with encouraging and facilitating the creation and archiving of material relating to current practices in midwifery and birth. Such work might include recorded interviews, journals, artworks, even with the right permissions and under the right conditions, some medical and legal records for the benefit of future historians.

For researchers, historians, midwives and childbearing women and families, it is vital that we are able to understand and explore our history from a range of sources, including original material such as birth records and contemporary accounts. If we don’t have archives of material from a range of sources, researchers end up relying purely on mainstream cultural representations of midwifery and birth. While these are also important sources, and should be part of the archive, we can’t rely wholly on what can be ideologically-loaded representations of issues around birth and midwifery. A good example of this is in 18th  and 19th century literary depictions of midwives including Dickens’ ‘Sarah Gamp’, a pejorative depiction of a midwife in literature that did a great disservice to public perceptions of midwifery.

The future for the project

Given these imperatives, when the opportunity to apply for some ‘seedcorn’ funding via the Health Humanities group arose, I very quickly constructed a bid. The bid aimed to win a small amount of money that could be used to gather stakeholders and draw up a much larger bid for Wellcome Trust funding. As mentioned, while it was unsuccessful the bid is now being reworked and I have no doubt that eventually we will see a national midwifery archive that is accessible to current and future generations.

The bid itself is outlined (below). After my talk I asked for questions and comments from audience members which will help to strengthen it in the future and I received some fascinating questions and useful tips. I would be very grateful for further feedback in the blog comment section which might help to strengthen the bid.

Background to the seedcorn bid

The profession of midwifery is not always visible and is often regarded by the public as a branch of nursing when in fact it has a unique history distinct from that of nursing, medicine and other health professions. Museums, libraries and archives play a crucial role in giving cultural value to health histories and practices, yet midwifery is not as well represented as other health professions including nursing and medicine. Where it does appear, it can be conflated with obstetrics and gynaecology to the detriment of the crucial inter-personal, relational role of the midwife, or be part only of temporary exhibitions that leave no enduring resource.

The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has a library and archive housed within the building of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London but other regions of the country are not well served and the archive is far from comprehensive. The RCM archive is also aimed more at scholars and is not easily accessible by members of the wider community including midwives and childbearing women.

More community-based and accessible resources which tell the stories, history and meaning of midwifery are vital for the development of contemporary women’s health services.

Proposal

This project proposes to explore ways of identifying and linking the often disparate and dispersed elements of the history of midwifery with a view to forming a usable resource which might better support researchers working in this area. It would also aim to create accessible community resources, bringing the treasures of midwifery’s past to light for the benefit of mothers, midwives, policy-makers (including health commissioners), historians and feminist researchers.

The project is envisaged in three parts as follows:

1) Scoping Exercise: A small-scale preliminary surveying and audit exercise will be conducted to gain an idea of the whereabouts and types of material that may be included in the proposed archive. These may include letters, journals, photographs, film, midwifery records and legal documents. This work could also include evidence to demonstrate the current lack of such material in readily accessible formats. This will form a pilot exercise to inform the formulation of a strategy for a larger and more comprehensive national audit.

2) Community Workshops: A workshop or series of workshops with midwives, maternity service users, researchers and other stakeholders to discover what they would like from the project. To explore the value of archives, museums and outputs to engage community involvement including music, theatre, online resources, books.

3) Symposium: We plan to hold a one-day symposium to bring together stakeholders in order to discuss where and how archive, museum and library materials may be housed and displayed –preferably using creative as well as traditional modalities. The symposium would aim to form the basis for the development of a bid for external funding to a body such as either the Heritage Lottery Fund or the WellcomeTrust. Ideas from the team which might form the basis of themes for discussion at the symposium include the following:

1. development of a new archive (maybe at Nottingham?)
2. copies of material collected put into existing archives
3. interviews recorded and digitised
4. photographs and other images digitised
5. films collected and everything that is created put into an online exhibition
6. a travelling exhibition which could tour hospitals and women’s organisations across the UK
7. a film could be produced which could be screened in cinemas and hospitals -a celebration of midwifery and the stories of the women, mothers and babies
8. commission of a piece of music which references material collected during the project and that could be performed and put in the digital exhibition

Collaborators

A strong team was gathered at two days’ notice which was the most demanding part of composing the entire bid:

Dr Phoebe Pallotti (Lead), Associate Professor in Midwifery at the University of Nottingham

Nicky Grace (post-graduate researcher)

Serena Cox (post-graduate researcher)

Professor Mavis Kirkham, Midwifery Professor Emerita at Sheffield Hallam University

Professor Julia Allison, Honorary Professor of Midwifery at the University of Nottingham

Rosa Straw and Culture Train (external partner) – http://culturetrain.co.uk/

The Association of Radical Midwives (external partner) – https://www.midwifery.org.uk/

Conclusion

I finished my talk to the Health Humanities group by saying that we need to make sure that the wisdom of people such as radical midwife, Mary Cronk (pictured below), are not lost but are valued and disseminated to future generations of women and midwives. ‘Archiving Midwifery’ will ensure that this is possible.

Photo of Mary Cronk and Nicky Grace (courtesy of Nicky Grace)
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/13/mary-cronk-obituary

The post Nicky Grace – Archiving Midwifery, 20 March 2019 appeared first on Nottingham Health Humanities: Early Bird Researcher Group.

First Early Bird Research Seminar Speaker, Kayla Kemhadjian, PhD Student at the University of Leeds

We were delighted to receive Kayla Kemhadjian as one of our first speakers for 2019. Read this post for more information on the talk she gave on ‘Seventeen Self-Deaths: Interpreting Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of Suicide through Lexical Analysis’

Kayla Kemhadjian, a first year doctoral researcher at the University of Leeds, presented a talk entitled ‘Seventeen Self-Deaths: Interpreting Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of Suicide through Lexical Analysis’. In it, Kemhadjian walked through three methodologies she uses in her research in order to tease out cultural perceptions of self-killings in Anglo-Saxon England.

She began with a caution and explanation for the history of the term ‘suicide’ in modern and pre-modern English. Though the term may look as though it descends from classical Latin, it is actually a 17th century Latin neologism. Despite this, scholars still use the word to color their interpretation of pre-seventeenth century self-deaths. Moreover, the frequency of the term occurring as a transitive verb ‘to commit suicide’ was shown to highlight the unlawful connotation the word still has today. However, given that the term did not exist in the period under analysis, and given that self-killing was not yet illegal in England, Kemhadjian highlighted the anachronism and ethnocentrism that comes with its usage.

Kemhadjian then showcased the seventeen self-killing terms she has found in Old English which describe mostly violent self-deaths. She used etymology and sense relation to highlight their associative differences, explaining the difference between a self-murder (premeditated; unlawful; secret) and a self-stabbing (legal; public; with a sharp object).

After explaining the etymology of self-killing terms in Old English, Kemhadjian moved on to discuss how to tease out connotations and associations the words may not show in their etymological make up, but may contextually relate. In order to do so, Kemhadjian introduced the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, showcasing the usefulness of reductive paraphrase. She used a case study from The Fortunes of Men to suggest that one self-killing term was used similarly to ModE ‘overdose’, which would not be evident by etymological enquiry alone.

Finally, Kemhadjian introduced Conceptual Metaphor Theory as a way to reconstruct cultural myths and perceptions from the ground up. She showed how self-killing in Old English relates and relies on other conceptual metaphors like DEATH IS A JOURNEY, or SIN AS ILLNESS.
Ultimately, Kemhadjian highlighted that she has found that Anglo-Saxon self-killers were perceived to be sinful prior to the act of their self-death, which will be proven and explained in her forthcoming thesis on what we would dub mental health in Anglo-Saxon
England.

Kayla Kemhadjian
PhD Student | University of Leeds | Institute for Medieval Studies
site: ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/pgr/1897/kayla-kemhadjian
email: hykyk@leeds.ac.uk

A few photos of Wednesday’s event will conclude this post.

The post Kayla Kemhadjian, First EBR Speaker – Wednesday 20 March appeared first on Nottingham Health Humanities: Early Bird Researcher Group.

We will be using this blog to post news and updates relating to all the exciting events and opportunities available to the EBR group!

Introducing your co-leaders!

We are delighted to introduce ourselves as co-leaders of the Early Bird Researcher group: Frances Cadd (School of Humanities), Emma Putland (School of English), Mathilde Vialard (School of Health Sciences), and Dr Colin Wright (Associate Professor in Critical Theory). We assure you we have been busy organising lots of interesting events and activities for the group over the last few months!

What is the Health Humanities?

The Health Humanities  investigates how the arts and humanities can inform and transform all aspects of health, healthcare and well-being – physical, mental, and social – making it increasingly recognised by policymakers owing to its vast impact potential. Areas of research into the relationship between the arts and humanities and health include, but are not limited to: language, literary representation, philosophy, theology, history, the built environment, material culture, and visual and performing arts.

The Early Bird Researcher Group

The EBR group invites all postgraduate students and early career researchers interested in the fast-growing field of Health Humanities to join our research group. It brings together like-minded researchers from a diverse range of faculties and departments across the university to facilitate discussion and collaboration in the field. If you would like to join our mailing list to become a member of the group, please email Mathilde Vialard: mathilde.vialard2@nottingham.ac.uk

EBR Seminar Series

This semester we have organised a seminar series with some fantastic speakers lined-up to present their research. These seminars will explore current research within the area as well as present opportunities for research collaborations, such as publications and bid development. They are free and open to all to attend – registration is not required! The first seminar on 20 March 2019 will be an introductory session with time to network, so do come along!

20 March, 17:00-19:00, B38a Trent Building
10 April, 17:00-19:00, A21 Trent Building 
16 May, 15:00-17:00, LG6 Trent Building
13 June, 15:00-17:00, A21 Trent Building
11 July, 15:00-17:00, LG9 Trent Building 

The seminars also function as work-in-progress peer support sessions, designed for you to get some feedback on your research in a friendly and constructive environment and to spark ideas for future progression.  We still have some slots available for presenters so if you are interested in sharing your research please contact one of us to reserve a slot for you. Research at any stage of completion is welcome!

We have arranged a whole host of thought provoking events and opportunities for the EBR group and we will be posting more information about those on here over the forthcoming weeks!

For now, thank you very much for your support and interest and we look forward to seeing you soon!

The EBR Team

Frances Cadd, School of Humanities (frances.cadd@nottingham.ac.uk)
Mathilde Vialard, School of Health Sciences (mathilde.vialard2@nottingham.ac.uk)
Emma Putland, School of English (emma.putland@nottingham.ac.uk)
Dr Colin Wright, School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies (colin.wright@nottingham.ac.uk)

The post Welcome to the Nottingham Health Humanities Early Bird Researcher Group Blog! appeared first on Nottingham Health Humanities: Early Bird Researcher Group.