A man in women’s studies research: Privileged in more than one sense

Qualitative investigations allow researchers to document the experience of certain aspects of peoples’ lives. In doing so, Psychologists and other qualitative researchers can build a rapport with their participants of such intensity it allows for unconstrained access to socio-emotional narratives which accompany a participants’ identity and psyche. In the first qualitative study I designed, I interviewed twelve never married older women about femininity, examining what effect, if any, marital status and ageing social networks had on gender identity; on the private-personal and public-political concepts of womanhood; and on later-life femininity. During two Grounded Theory analyses, I became increasingly aware that despite embracing a critical realist ontology and wanting findings to be revealed from within the data (objectivist epistemology), I had been influenced by my readings on gender and sex: de Beauvoir’s notion of “One is not born, but becomes woman”, and Bem’s “Psychological Androgyny”. Wrestling with my position as a (male) researcher bringing my interpretation of existing theory to women’s studies research, I questioned whether I had become a subjective spectator instead of the objective outsider I set-out to be

The powerful student consumer and the commodified academic: A depiction of the marketised UK Higher Education system through a textual analysis of the ITV drama Cheat.

Through a textual analysis of four episodes comprising the 2019 ITV 1 psychological thriller Cheat, this paper explores a fictional representation of the United Kingdom (UK) Higher Education (HE) setting in the television drama. We discuss our analysis in the context of growing marketisation of UK HE, where academics are increasingly viewing students as powerful consumers. We focus on one of the central characters, final-year undergraduate student Rose Vaughan, and the staff with whom she interacts in a fictional HE institution – St. Helen’s College. This paper engages with the following themes: ‘The powerful student consumer’; and ‘The commodified academic’. Insight gleaned through the textual analysis of this dramatised depiction of UK HE allows us to attempt to understand how both students and academics might be navigating the neoliberal university and negotiating place and status as (paying) students and (commercial) academics. Though heralded as powerful student-consumers in much literature, our analysis of this television drama shows how students can potentially disrupt the united front often attempted by HE institutions, but ultimately are faced with a ‘the house always wins’i scenario. Our paper offers an important contribution to the psycho-sociological literature into how the television drama depicts that the student experience has been transformed and impacted by HE's marketisation. This includes a reconsideration of how the television drama portrays what it means to be a student, by exploring how one student is conceptualised, understood, and represented in the psychological thriller

Further uses for Grounded Theory: A methodology for psychological studies of the visual arts and written media

Grounded Theory remains a popular qualitative methodology even after half-a-century of existence. Recent years have seen a renaissance in the use of the methodology, and it is increasingly being utilised in innovative ways. These have included the application of Grounded Theory to ‘non-traditional’ data such as those derived from the performing arts, literature, and visual media. Most published Grounded Theory analyses using these data appear experimental and/or tentative when drawing their conclusions, and little guidance is published on how to conduct Grounded Theory on visual and textual media. With this article, we go some way towards redressing this issue and further explore the adaptability and utility of Grounded Theory as a qualitative methodology. Further, we offer a methodological approach derived from the ‘Classical’ school, to be used by Psychologists and other Social Science Researchers who wish to explore psychological phenomena in the context of the performing arts, literature, and visual media

From mothers to matriarchs

The Psychologist Blog Pos

“There are lots of new faces this year… I’m not entirely sure when I became one of the old ones”: a psycho-ethnography of the self at #PoWESconf five years in

Conferences have been discussed as spaces for academic work to extend beyond the confines of one’s institution, fostering environments of collaborative working, learning, and social bond-making. The British Psychological Society’s Psychology of Women and Equalities Section hosts an annual conference, attended by feminist scholars from around the world. Drawing on auto-ethnography and psycho-biography, this paper presents a ‘psycho-ethnography of the self’ with reflections centred on: ‘Scholarship’, ‘Feminist Praxis’; ‘(Safe) Academic Spaces’; and ‘Positioning the Self’. This article contributes to a small, but growing body of literature critically reflecting on conferences as spaces for personal and professional development and academic growth

The neoliberal university and the neurotic academic: A textual analysis of ITV drama Cheat

Through a textual analysis of four episodes comprising the ITV 1 psychological thriller Cheat, this paper explores depictions of the English Higher Education [HE] landscape and of the lived experiences of being an academic in the television drama. We achieve this through a focus on the fictional HE institution where the drama is set–St. Helen’s College–and the central character, university Lecturer: Dr Leah Dale; who is employed on a fixed-term contract and is applying for tenure. This paper engages with the following themes: Emotional Labour; Precarity of Fixed-Term Contracts; and Imposter Syndrome. Insight gleaned through the textual analysis contributes to the understanding of how academics might be navigating and negotiating the neoliberal university. In particular, we highlight the implications of contractual precarity in HE and the fragility of identity which is experienced by some academics. As such, this paper goes some way towards remedying the deficit of scholarship on the lived experiences of being a contemporary academic. © 2020, © 2020 UCU

The Male Gaze or Male Gays? From Romance to Bromance through Performances of Gender and Sexuality by two of Love Island’s Favourite Characters

This paper draws on two favourite characters from British reality television show, Love Island 2018: Jack Fincham, a former stationery sales manager, and Alex George, an Accident & Emergency [A&E] doctor, to explore how heterosexual norms are constructed and challenged. We study the romantic on-screen relationships these characters have with the female contestants, and between the two male characters themselves through the notion of ‘bromance’. Through a textual analysis of the spoken words and physical interactions between characters in episodes forming the fourth series of Love Island and analysis of social media posts and articles in popular press outlets, we use the notion of gender performativity to explore how these characters perform both hegemonic and, what we argue is, ‘threatened’ masculinity. We use the ‘Male Gaze’ to methodologically lens the performances by characters and their romantic interactions on the television show. In particular, we focus on Jack and Alex’s budding relationship and the condemning of this relationship by the public amid Alex’s termination of his romantic relationship. The decision by Alex to end this relationship led to many viewers questioning his sexuality, with specific reference to his adoration for Jack. Whilst broadly, this paper contributes to debates on the sociological potential of reality television shows, such as Love Island, its specific contribution is to a small, but growing body of international scholarship on homosocial relationships and male love stories in television and film. With this paper, we also contribute towards redressing the marginalization of women within the study of bromance

Preliminary findings on the experiences of care for parents who suffered perinatal bereavement during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented risk to the global population. Maternity care in the UK was subject to many iterations of guidance on how best to reconfigure services to keep women, their families and babies, and healthcare professionals safe. Parents who experience a pregnancy loss or perinatal death require particular care and support. PUDDLES is an international collaboration investigating the experiences of recently bereaved parents who suffered a late miscarriage, stillbirth, or neonatal death during the global COVID-19 pandemic, in seven countries. In this study, we aim to present early findings from qualitative work undertaken with recently bereaved parents in the United Kingdom about how access to healthcare and support services was negotiated during the pandemic. METHODS: In-depth semi-structured interviews were undertaken with parents (N = 24) who had suffered a late miscarriage (n = 5; all mothers), stillbirth (n = 16; 13 mothers, 1 father, 1 joint interview involving both parents), or neonatal death (n = 3; all mothers). Data were analysed using a template analysis with the aim of investigating bereaved parents' access to services, care, and networks of support, during the pandemic after their bereavement. RESULTS: All parents had experience of utilising reconfigured maternity and/or neonatal, and bereavement care services during the pandemic. The themes utilised in the template analysis were: 1) The Shock & Confusion Associated with Necessary Restrictions to Daily Life; 2) Fragmented Care and Far Away Families; 3) Keeping Safe by Staying Away; and 4) Impersonal Care and Support Through a Screen. Results suggest access to maternity, neonatal, and bereavement care services were all significantly reduced, and parents' experiences were notably affected by service reconfigurations. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings, whilst preliminary, are important to document now, to help inform care and service provision as the pandemic continues and to provide learning for ongoing and future health system shocks. We draw conclusions on how to enable development of safe and appropriate services during this pandemic and any future health crises, to best support parents who experience a pregnancy loss or whose babies die

The relationship between prematurity and maternal mental health during the first postpartum year

Studies concerning the effect of a premature birth on maternal mental health suggest symptoms of depression and anxiety are more prevalent in mothers of premature infants compared to mothers of term infants. However, most studies investigating depressive symptoms only relate to a few months postpartum, whilst no anxiety measures used have been postpartum-specific. Additionally, symptoms of anxiety and depression in mothers of extremely premature infants (<28 weeks’ gestation) are relatively understudied. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between early gestational age and symptoms of anxiety and depression, with a secondary emphasis on mothers of extremely premature infants. 225 mothers of infants aged between birth and 12 months completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and the Postpartum Specific Anxiety Scale via an online questionnaire. Hierarchical regression models revealed that gestational age was associated with postpartum specific anxieties and was differentially associated with subscales of the PSAS. Furthermore, mothers of extremely premature infants experience specific subscales in the PSAS to a higher extent than mothers of term infants. There was no association between prematurity and depressive symptoms. These findings demonstrate the need for specific, targeted interventions for mothers of premature infants

Dangerously intelligent: A call for re-evaluating psychopathy using perceptions of intelligence.

Background: Primary psychopathy (i.e., unemotional and callous predisposition) is associated with career, educational, and general life success, whereas secondary psychopathy (i.e., impulsivity and risk-taking) relates to criminality, hedonistic lifestyles, and detrimental behaviours. Although psychopathy sub-types have differential relationships to career and life success, how these traits are perceived by others relating to intelligence has not previously been researched. It is also unclear what role an individual’s own psychopathy score plays in perceptions of intelligence. Methods: In an online experiment (N = 458), we investigated perceptions of intelligence (via a combined proxy of whether the rater thought the character in the vignettes had a high IQ and had attended university), using 12 vignettes of high and low primary and secondary psychopathic individuals. Results: High-secondary-psychopathy vignettes were perceived as least intelligent (in agreement with the literature which states people high in secondary psychopathy traits are usually involved in petty crimes, risk taking, and substance abuse, and therefore perceived as socially undesirable). Low-secondary-psychopathy vignettes were perceived significantly more intelligent than high-primary-psychopathy vignettes (in-line with the literature suggesting the placidity and kindness which comes with being low in psychopathic traits is an amenable quality in our society). There was evidence for assortative intelligence perceptions: those high-primary psychopathy self-scorers perceived primary psychopathy vignettes as intelligent (which could be evidence of a ‘likes attract’ phenomenon, whereby those high in primary psychopathy admire others who are similarly high in primary psychopathy). Conclusions: The results suggest individuals demonstrating risk-taking behaviours are perceived as least intelligent, supporting previous research associating secondary psychopathy with poor academic or career success