Discourse and Configurations of Gender

My research paper is an investigation of the discourse of gender in relation to the work of Michel Foucault, Susan Bordo, Judith Butler and the artists Louise Bourgeois, Fiona Hall, Jo Spence and Neil Emmerson. I have applied Foucault's notion of the formation, necessity and operations of discourses as the basis from which ideas can be articulated, and the context within which notions of gender are formulated and challenged. I examine the processes in discourses, such as the imposition of disciplines to control the subject, which in turn are inscribed in the body of the subject by the subject, as they begin to perceive and define themselves in terms of the disciplines. I use this theory on the relationship between discourse-power-knowledge to analyse my work and that of the artists mentioned. The work of each artist is discussed in terms of the discourse of gender and the basis from which they critique its power, its effects on bodies and forms of representation through a marginal discourse. For the purposes of my work, the conclusion reached is that to disrupt the discourse of gender entails a continual questioning and awareness of its 'truths,' processes and effects. Description of Studio Work: The three major works examine the power and operations of the discourse of gender on bodies and how marginal discourses subvert these constructions. My works in paper, printmedia and metal, in two dimensions and three, reflect the effects through forms that seek to question limitations and extend our conception of male and female bodies. The wall piece, Out of Order, re-configures symbols and signs from the discourse of gender as a means of disrupting notions that gender is immutable. A swirling red line is woven through a densely layered mass of horizontal broken lines. The addition of symbols, X and Y chromosomes, numbers and other tokens of gender, appear at various points in this marginal discourse on conception of 'bodies.' Mammaphone, which accompanies Out of Order and Bullrushes, consists of an enlarged breast LP playing on a turntable. The 'tracks' are a litany of terms for the breast from slang and maternal discourses. The turntable that 'hosts' the LP sits on top of a stylised 'flight recorder's black box,' which suggests the hidden discourse on gender. Bullrushes, is an arrangement of 20 phallic-like forms each on a flexible metal rod that sways with the passage of air around the work. The work presents male bodies as durable, delicate and vulnerable despite the norms of the masculine discourse. The intention is to put into process an interrogation of the effects of gender on bodies and the possibilities for re-thinking the discourse of gender

E-læring - overvejelser om kursusplanlægning og kursusudvikling

<p>Første gang publiceret i UNEV nr. 8: Tilrettelæggelse af efter- og videreuddannelse på universitetet, nov. 2006, red. Sanne Almeborg og Tom Nyvang. ISSN 1603-5518.</p><p>Denne artikel er et forsøg på at konkretisere nogle af de mange overvejelser omkring kursusplanlægning og kursusudvikling, der er forbundet med at tilrettelægge et kursus til fjernstuderende. Artiklen koncentrerer sig om det arbejde, der ligger forud for undervisningen, mens de praktiske og pædagogiske udfordringer, der knytter sig til den faktiske undervisning, ikke betragtes her. Artiklen er primært baseret på forfatterens betragtninger og refleksioner i forbindelse med planlægningen og udviklingen et kursusmodul af den netbaserede masteruddannelse Master of Applied Statistics.</p&gt

Parameterisation-invariant versions of Wald tests

Although Wald tests form one of the major classes of hypothesis tests, they suffer from the well-known major drawback that they are not invariant under reparameterisation. This thesis uses the differential-geometric concept of a yoke to introduce one-parameter families of geometric Wald statistics, which are parameterisation-invariant statistics in the spirit of the traditional Wald statistics. Both the geometric Wald statistics based on the expected likelihood yokes and those based on the observed likelihood yokes are investigated. Bartlett-type adjustments of the geometric Wald statistics are obtained, in order to improve the accuracy of the chi-squared approximations to their distributions under the null hypothesis

Quality in Modern Nordic Working Life—Investigating Three Related Research Perspectives and Their Possible Cross-Fertilization

Nordic working life balance is important in the context of a highly developed welfare state, budget collaboration between the State and municipalities, and a unified labor movement. In working life studies, various research perspectives create meaning around and propose solutions for the many quality issues of modern working life. Welfare research, working environment research, and human resource management (HRM) research attack the multiple challenges of working life in different ways and share the overall objective of solving issues in modern working life. Research from the three perspectives, however, tends to compartmentalize life spheres. They conceptualize the modern working person as an individual, employee, or citizen, neglecting the complexity of lived life where all three spheres blur together, which possibly reflects the difficulty of making modern work life function well. This article is based on a structured literature review of the three main research perspectives (welfare, working environment, and HRM). We review existing international research, observing where the three perspectives show overlaps and identify 24 studies which cross-fertilize in the sense that two or more of the perspectives are applied at the same time in the same study. Our results show that while the perspectives share a common interest in solving the problems of the overlapping working life (OWL), they do so with different methods and criteria for success, and offer different solutions. We propose the concept “OWL” to analyze how working life studies create meaning around quality issues of modern working life. OWL’s main focus is the multiple challenges faced by working people who are simultaneously individuals, citizens, and employees. We arrive at two main cross-disciplinary themes: boundary and quality. The boundary theme reflects an approach to solving the issues of modern working life through improvements of the working life balance. The quality theme reflects an approach to solving issues in modern working life by addressing quality of work, preventing stress, burnout, etc. The review only finds three studies which try to encompass all three life spheres (employee, citizen, and employee), and even when the research perspectives are cross-fertilized, knowledge of possible effects of cross-fertilization is sparse. We propose further research in initiatives aiming at improving the complementing and supplementing of the three perspectives especially with regard to facilitation of families with small children, an intensified focus on inclusive workplaces, and a higher degree of correlation between HRM, working environment, and welfare policies

Emotional risk work during the pandemic:Healthcare professionals’ perceptions from a COVID-19 ward

In March 2020, COVID-19 wards were established in hospitals in Denmark. Healthcare professionals from a variety of specialities and wards were transferred to these new wards to care for patients admitted with severe COVID-19 infections. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a COVID-19 ward at a hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, including focus group interviews with nursing staff, we intended to explore practices in a COVID-19 ward by seeking insight into the relation between the work carried out and the professionals’ ways of talking about it. We used a performative approach of studying how the institutional ways of handling pandemic risk work comes into being and relates to the health professionals’ emerging responses. The empirical analysis pointed at emotional responses by the nursing staff providing COVID-19 care as central. To explore these emotional responses we draw on the work of Mary Douglas and Deborah Lupton’s concept of the ‘emotion-risk-assemblage’. Our analysis provides insight into how emotions are contextually produced and linked to institutional risk understandings. We show that work in the COVID-19 ward was based on an institutional order that was disrupted during the pandemic, producing significant emotions of insecurity. Although these emotions are structurally produced, they are simultaneously internalised as feelings of incompetence and shame.In March 2020, COVID-19 wards were established in hospitals in Denmark. Healthcare professionals from a variety of specialities and wards were transferred to these new wards to care for patients admitted with severe COVID-19 infections. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a COVID-19 ward at a hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, including focus group interviews with nursing staff, we intended to explore practices in a COVID-19 ward by seeking insight into the relation between the work carried out and the professionals’ ways of talking about it. We used a performative approach of studying how the institutional ways of handling pandemic risk work comes into being and relates to the health professionals’ emerging responses. The empirical analysis pointed at emotional responses by the nursing staff providing COVID-19 care as central. To explore these emotional responses we draw on the work of Mary Douglas and Deborah Lupton’s concept of the ‘emotion-risk-assemblage’. Our analysis provides insight into how emotions are contextually produced and linked to institutional risk understandings. We show that work in the COVID-19 ward was based on an institutional order that was disrupted during the pandemic, producing significant emotions of insecurity. Although these emotions are structurally produced, they are simultaneously internalised as feelings of incompetence and shame

The LEAD trial - the effectiveness of a decision aid on decision making among citizens with lower educational attainment who have not participated in FIT-based colorectal cancer screening in Denmark: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: Colorectal cancer screening participation is a preference-sensitive choice, in which trade-offs between benefits and harms must be made by individual citizens. Often the decision is made without any contact with healthcare professionals. Citizens with lower educational attainment tend to participate less in colorectal cancer screening than citizens with average educational attainment. Further, they tend to have lower levels of knowledge about colorectal cancer screening. Providing lower educational attainment citizens with a targeted decision aid embracing their diverse information needs might increase these citizens’ ability to make informed decisions. The aim of this trial is to test the effectiveness of such a newly developed self-administered decision aid. Methods: The LEAD (Lower Educational Attainment Decision aid) trial will be conducted as a two-arm randomized controlled trial among 10,000 50–74-year-old citizens, resident in the Central Denmark Region not yet invited to take up colorectal cancer screening. Citizens will receive a baseline questionnaire. Respondents will be allocated into the intervention or the control groups. Citizens in the intervention group will receive the decision aid whereas the control group will not. Those who return a stool sample within 45 days after receiving the screening invitation and those with medium or higher educational attainment are excluded. Both groups will receive a follow-up questionnaire 90 days after being invited to colorectal cancer screening. A historic cohort consisting of 5000 50–74-year-old citizens resident in the Central Denmark Region, having received their screening invitation in the beginning of 2017 will be included. This cohort will receive a follow-up questionnaire 6–9 months after they received the screening invitation. Informed choice will be evaluated by assessing levels of knowledge, attitudes, and screening uptake. Analyses will be conducted as intention-to-treat analyses. Additionally, differences between levels of worry and decisional conflict between groups will be assessed as secondary outcomes

Light emission from silicon with tin-containing nanocrystals

Tin-containing nanocrystals, embedded in silicon, have been fabricated by growing an epitaxial layer of Si_{1-x-y}Sn_{x}C_{y}, where x = 1.6 % and y = 0.04 %, followed by annealing at various temperatures ranging from 650 to 900 degrees C. The nanocrystal density and average diameters are determined by scanning transmission-electron microscopy to ~ 10^{17} cm^{-3} and ~ 5 nm, respectively. Photoluminescence spectroscopy demonstrates that the light emission is very pronounced for samples annealed at 725 degrees C, and Rutherford back-scattering spectrometry shows that the nanocrystals are predominantly in the diamond-structured phase at this particular annealing temperature. The origin of the light emission is discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to AIP Advance

Effectiveness of a decision aid for colorectal cancer screening on components of informed choice according to educational attainment: a randomised controlled trial

Background The decision to take up colorectal cancer screening has to be made on informed grounds balancing benefits and harms. Self-administered decision aids can support citizens in making an informed choice. A self-administered web-based decision aid targeting citizens with lower educational attainment has been evaluated within the target population. However, the effectiveness in the general screening population remains unexplored. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a web-based decision aid for colorectal cancer screening on components of informed choice among previous non-participants in colorectal cancer screening. Methods and findings The study was designed as a parallel randomised controlled trial among non-participants in colorectal cancer screening in Central Denmark Region (men and women aged 53–74 years). Respondents to baseline and follow-up questionnaires comprised the study population (n = 1,723). The intervention group received the decision aid electronically along with the second reminder. The control group received only the second reminder. The main outcomes (knowledge, attitudes, uptake and decisional conflict) were obtained through questionnaires data and from the Danish Colorectal Cancer Screening Database. The decision aid increased the uptake rate by 8 percentage points (95% CI: 3.4;12.6) but had no effect on either knowledge (scale score differences: 0.09; 95% CI: -0.05;0.24) or attitudes (0.45; 95% CI: -0.00;0.91). Decisional conflict decreased by 1.69 scale points (95% CI: -3.18;-0.20). The effect was similar across educational attainment levels. Conclusions The web-based decision aid offers a feasible way to provide individualised screening information in a "one size fits all" approach that may hold the potential to increase informed CRC screening uptake