"I’m complicit and I’m ambivalent and that’s crazy":care-less spaces for women in the academy

This paper is about three working class women academics in their 40s, who are at different phases in their career. I take a reflexive, feminist, (Reay 2000, 2004, Ribbens and Edwards 1998) life story approach (Plummer, 2001) in order to understand their particular narratives about identity, complicity, relationships and discomfort within the academy, and then how they inhabit care-less spaces. However unique their narratives, I am able to explore an aspect of higher education – women and their working relationships – through a lens of care-less spaces, and argue that care-less-ness in the academy, can create and reproduce animosity and collusion. Notably, this is damaging for intellectual pursuits, knowledge production and markedly, the identity of woman academics. In introducing this work, I first contextualise women in the academy and define the term care-less spaces, then move onto discuss feminist methods. I then explore and critique in some detail, the substantive findings under the headings of ‘complicity and ‘faking’ it’ and ‘publishing and collaboration’. The final section concludes the paper by drawing on Herring’s (2013) legal premise, in the context of care ethics, as a way to interrogate particular care-less spaces within higher education

Co-constructed caring research and intellectual disability:an exploration of friendship, intimacy and being human

For this paper, emotional and socio-political questions lie at the heart of relationships in understanding intellectual disability and what it is to be a human. While the sexual and intimate is more often than not based on a private and personal relationship with the self and (an)other, the sexual and intimate life of intellectually disabled people is more often a ‘public’ affair governed by parents and/or carers, destabilizing what we might consider ethical and caring practices. In the socio-political sphere, as an all-encompassing ‘care space’, social intolerance and aversion to difficult differences are played out, impacting upon the intimate lives of intellectually disabled people. As co-researchers (one intellectually disabled and one ‘non-disabled’), we discuss narratives from a small scale research project and our personal reflections. In sociological research and more specifically within disability research it is clear that we need to keep sex and intimacy on the agenda, yet also find ways of doing research in a meaningful, caring and co-constructed way

Just Mothers: criminal justice, care ethics and “disabled” offenders

YesResearch with prisoners’ families is limited in the context of learning difficulties/disabilities (LD) and autism spectrum. Life-story interviews with mothers reveal an extended period of emotional and practical care labour, as the continuous engagement with their son’s education and experiences of physical and emotional abuse are explored. Prior to their son’s incarceration, mothers spoke of stigma and barriers to support throughout their childrearing, as well as limited or absent preventative/positive care practices. Subsequently prisons and locked wards seem to feature as a progression. Mothers have experienced abuse; physical and/or emotional, as well as lives that convey accounts of failure. Not their failure, but that of the systems. A care ethics model of disability assists an analysis of the narratives where care-less spaces are identified. Interrelated experiences merging emotional responses to extended mothering, the external forces of disabilism and destructive systems, lead to proposing a rehumanising of care practices within for example, education and the criminal justice system.The Leverhume Trust (RF-2016-613\8

Rape and Sexual Assault: The Criminalised Disabled Sex Offender

The collective belief that a sex offender is dangerous, is powerful in considering sexual norms and incarceration. In this article, I tell stories of sex crimes via life-story interviews with neurodivergent men who have additional learning difficulties, who were criminalised for sexual assault or rape, and mothers. This research cannot eradicate the harm for those who are historically institutionalised, nor can it help victims of sexual assault. However, there is a need to challenge troubling micro and macro-bureaucratic processes across institutions and systems such as education, health, and criminal justice, to support disabled people and their families care-fully and ethically

Life Stories, Criminal Justice and Caring Research

YesIn the context of offenders who have learning difficulties, autism and/or social, emotional and mental health problems, their families, and professionals who work with them, I explore caring and ethical research processes via fieldnotes I wrote while carrying out lifestory interviews. Life-story interviews and recording fieldnotes within qualitative criminological, education and sociological research have long since been used to document and analyse communities, institutions and everyday life in the private and public spheres. They richly tell us about specific contexts, research relationships and emotional responses to data collection that interview transcripts alone overlook. It is in the process of recording and reflecting upon research relationships that we can see and understand ‘care-full’ research. But caring and ethical research works in an interdependent and relational way. Therefore, the participant and the researcher are at times vulnerable, and recognition of such is critical in considering meaningful and healthy research practices. However, the acknowledgment that particular types of data collection can be messy, chaotic and emotional is necessary in understanding caring research.The Leverhulme Trust (RF-2016-613\8)

Household-level factors associated with relapse following discharge from treatment for moderate acute malnutrition

AbstractFactors associated with relapse among children who are discharged after reaching a threshold denoted ‘recovered’ from moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) are not well understood. The aim of this study was to identify factors associated with sustained recovery, defined as maintaining a mid-upper-arm circumference≥12·5 cm for 1 year after release from treatment. On the basis of an observational study design, we analysed data from an in-depth household (HH) survey on a sub-sample of participants within a larger cluster randomised controlled trial (cRCT) that followed up children for 1 year after recovery from MAM. Out of 1497 children participating in the cRCT, a subset of 315 children participated in this sub-study. Accounting for other factors, HH with fitted lids on water storage containers (P=0·004) was a significant predictor of sustained recovery. In addition, sustained recovery was better among children whose caregivers were observed to have clean hands (P=0·053) and in HH using an improved sanitation facility (P=0·083). By contrast, socio-economic status and infant and young child feeding practices at the time of discharge and HH food security throughout the follow-up period were not significant. Given these results, we hypothesise that improved water, sanitation and hygiene conditions in tandem with management of MAM through supplemental feeding programmes have the possibility to decrease relapse following recovery from MAM. Furthermore, the absence of associations between relapse and nearly all HH-level factors indicates that the causal factors of relapse may be related mostly to the child’s individual, underlying health and nutrition status.</jats:p

Mapping the medical outcomes study HIV health survey (MOS-HIV) to the EuroQoL 5 Dimension (EQ-5D-3L) utility index

10.1186/s12955-019-1135-8Health and Quality of Life Outcomes1718