Medical Sociology Through Another Lens - Visitors from Drexel University

17 April 2018
11:45-1:00pm
Department of Sociology
W/222


On 17 April we are delighted to be welcoming our Sociology colleagues Susan Bell, Kelly Joyce and Kelly Underman from Drexel University, USA. They will be giving an exciting series of talks at the interface of STS and Medical Sociology (chaired by Daryl Martin). All Welcome! (W/222 11:45-13:00)


Contact Sarah.shrive-morrison@york.ac.uk to register your place

Materialities of Care: Encountering Health and Illness Through Artefacts and Architecture

Special Issue of the journal Sociology of Health and Illness

Chrissy Buse, Daryl Martin and Sarah Nettleton have edited a special issue which has just come out online in the journal Sociology of Health and Illness. The theme of the special issue is Materialities of Care: Encountering Health and Illness Through Artefacts and Architecture http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/shil.2018.40.issue-2/issuetoc] The special issue will also appear as a book, to be released later this year https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Materialities+of+Care%3A+Encountering+Health+and+Illness+Through+Artefacts+and+Architecture-p-9781119499732].

The special issue addresses the role of material culture within health and social care encounters, including everyday objects, dress, furniture and architecture. It aims to makes visible the mundane and often unnoticed aspects of material culture, and to explore interrelations between materials and care practices. The special issue explores these themes in different contexts, including articles focused on hospitals, care homes, hospices, domestic households, streets and stairwells and museums.

The publication builds on an earlier research symposium Materialities of Care: Encountering Health and Illness Through Objects, Artefacts, and Architecture https://www.york.ac.uk/sociology/about/department/2015/materialitiesofcare/], held at York in 2015, supported by the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness http://www.shifoundation.org.uk/], which led to the development of a research network organised by Chrissy Buse and Daryl Martin called ‘Materialities of Care’ http://materialitiesofcare.co.uk/about/] (see also twitter @materialities1). It is an interdisciplinary network which brings together people from a range of disciplines, including: sociology; history; archaeology; architecture; geography and museum studies, as well as museum curators, artists and other practitioners.

PhD 2018 Conference - Empowered Bodies

REGISTRATION OPEN

Call for Papers

We are pleased to announce our Postgraduate Conference for students and researchers interested in the role of the body in social sciences and the concept of embodiment as a source of critical reflection in diverse disciplines. We invite abstracts that deal with embodiment in any thematic or methodological way, from a diverse range of disciplines like Gender Studies, Politics, Philosophy, Geography, Arts, Health, Media, STS, Social Policy and any other approach.

Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Power, gender and identity
• Politics of the body
• Body transformations
• Health, Food and Practices
• Disabilities, agency and control
• Affect and Emotions
• Technology, humans and cyborgs
• Body as Mediation
• Arts, performance and creation
• Cultural representations of the body
• Measurement, tracking and datafication of the self

Masters and PhD Students are particularly encouraged to submit an abstract, as well as other postgraduate students in early stages of analysis, as this is an excellent chance to present your work in a constructive and supportive environment. We also welcome works in progress by any other level of early career researchers.

If you are interested in presenting a paper, please submit an abstract of up to 300 words to empowered-bodies@york.ac.uk by Friday, 14 April 2018 at 5:00 pm.

We also welcome any other form of presentation or performance such music, dance, video, etc. as long as it can be fitted within the program. Please send us your idea with your abstract and try to be as specific as possible of any technical or room requirements and the kind of activity that you would like to present.

A limited number of travel bursaries will be available.

Further information will be released by the end of March 2018. Please direct all enquires to empowered-bodies@york.ac.uk

Registration Open  £5.00

Imagining the History of the Future: Unsettling Scientific Stories

27-29th March, 2018 | Ron Cooke Hub, University of York, UK


The future just isn’t what it used to be… not least because people keep changing it. Recent years have seen a significant growth of academic and public interest in the role of the sciences in creating and sustaining both imagined and enacted futures. Technological innovations and emergent theoretical paradigms gel and jolt against abiding ecological, social, medical or economic concerns: researchers, novelists, cartoonists, civil servants, business leaders and politicians assess and estimate the costs of planning for or mitigating likely consequences. The trouble is that thinking about the future is a matter of perspective: where you decide to stand constrains what you can see

With confirmed plenary speakers Professor Sherryl Vint (University of California, Riverside, USA) and Professor Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent, UK) this three-day conference will bring together scholars, practitioners, and activists to explore ways in which different visions of the future and its history can be brought into productive dialogue.


To register (£40 full conference, or £20 per day) please follow this link https://store.york.ac.uk/product-catalogue/sociology/imagining-the-history-of-the-future-unsettling-scientific-stories


If you have any further queries please contact; unsettling-science@york.ac.uk

Programme available here

Decision-making During Childbirth Study

Interactional Practices of Decision Making During Childbirth in Maternity Units
Clare Jackson, Vicky Land, Lyn Brierley-Jones

Plain English Summary - Background and study aims

Government policy states that women in labour should be involved in decisions about their care and treatment. It is known what is said during labour matters for how women experience birth. However, policy recommendations to staff about how to communicate with women in labour are not based on evidence about what actually happens in birth. This is because most existing research is based on interviewing or surveying women some weeks after birth, so the details of what was said in labour are lost. Research is needed that provides details of actual talk about decisions during labour. The details of talk matter because as other studies of communication in medical settings have shown, even small changes in use of words can make a difference to what happens in healthcare e.g. one study in a GP setting showed that changing from ‘is there anything else?’ to ‘is there something else?’ increased the
number of reported symptoms told to the doctor. The aim of this study is to find out how decisions are reached and communication through the talk that happens between staff, women in labour and their birth partners when giving birth in maternity units. It also aims to provide staff and women with detailed information about the effects of talk during labour in order to inform and empower staff, women and birth partners.

Who can participate?
Women , their birth partners and health care practitioners.

What does the study involve?
Participants who consent to taking part in the study are video or audio recorded during labour and birth. This is to establish how decisions are made during labour and birth. Participants are also asked to complete an ante-natal and a post –natal questionnaire at 35 weeks and 6 weeks post birth respectively to assess the relationship between their expectations before birth, their birth experience and their satisfaction post-birth.

What are the possible benefits and risks of participating?
There are no direct risks or benefits to those taking part in the study.

Where is the study run from?
1. University of York (UK)
2. Calderdale Royal Hospital (UK)
3. Sheffield Royal Hallamshire Hospital (UK)

When is the study starting and how long is it expected to run for?
May 2017 to March 2020

Who is funding the study?
National Institute for Health Research (UK)

Who is the main contact?
1. Professor Ellen Annandale (Scientific)
ellen.annandale@york.ac.uk
2. Dr Lyn Brierley-Jones (Public)
lyn.brierley-jones@york.ac.uk

Death & Culture II Conference (Registration Open)

6-7 September 2018, 9.00am

How does culture understand death?

This biennial conference focuses on the impact of mortality on culture, and the ways in which the very fact of death has shaped human behaviour, evidenced through thought, action, production and expression. The conference, in its second iteration, seeks to continue engaging with the study of mortality as an academic enterprise, supported by evidence and framed by theoretical engagement. This truly interdisciplinary event brings together death scholars, including postgraduates, as well as those who might not consider themselves death scholars whose work that overlaps with death and the dead.

We welcome contributions on topics such as but not limited to:

• Governance of mortality
• Death in the popular imagination
• Death and the digital realm
• Work in the death industry
• Mass death in the age of individualism
• Artistic death

Keynote speakers:

• Professor Dina Khapaeva
• Professor Dorthe Refslund Christensen
• Professor Joanna Bourke
• Professor Stephen Regan 

This event will launch a new associated book series, Emerald Studies in Death and Culture

Location: University of York, Ron Cooke Hub

Admission: Registration OPEN

Email: death-and-culture@york.ac.uk

Imagining the History of the Future: Unsettling Scientific Stories (3 Days) Registration Open

Tuesday 27-29 March 2018, 9.00 am - 5:00 pm

Speakers:Professor Sherryl Vint (University of California, Riverside, USA)
Professor Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent, UK)

The future just isn’t what it used to be… not least because people keep changing it. Recent years have seen a significant growth of academic and public interest in the role of the sciences in creating and sustaining both imagined and enacted futures. Technological innovations and emergent theoretical paradigms gel and jolt against abiding ecological, social, medical or economic concerns: researchers, novelists, cartoonists, civil servants, business leaders and politicians assess and estimate the costs of planning for or mitigating likely consequences. The trouble is that thinking about the future is a matter of perspective: where you decide to stand constrains what you can see.

With confirmed plenary speakers Professor Sherryl Vint (University of California, Riverside, USA) and Professor Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent, UK) this three-day conference will bring together scholars, practitioners, and activists to explore ways in which different visions of the future and its history can be brought into productive dialogue.

Focused on the long technological 20th Century (roughly, 1887-2007) and looking particularly at the intersections between fictional/narrative constructions of the future, expert knowledge, and institutional policy development, the themes of the conference will include but are not limited to:

• The relationship between lay and expert futures, especially futures produced by communities marginalised in public dialogue by ethnicity, gender, sexuality, species or political orientation
• How have different forms of fiction (novels, films, games, comics) created different visions of what’s to come? How have their audiences responded to and shaped them?
• The role of counterfactuals/alternate histories, as well as factional accounts and popular science: how have different forms of writing positioned the future?
• What’s the relationship between past and present scenario planning in government or commerce? How have they fed into wider cultural conceptions of impending developments?
• Disciplinary influences: how have different academic disciplines – sciences, humanities, arts, social sciences – fed into developing futures? Has this changed over time?
• The role of futures past: how can we recover them, and what do they tell us about futures present? What are the forgotten or marginalised sites of future-making
• How have different themes – time, the apocalypse, the individual, among others – changed over the last century of future-thinking?

Website: http://unsettlingscientificstories.co.uk/imagined-futuresTwitter: @UnSetSciStories #ImaginedFutures

Registration: http://store.york.ac.uk/product-catalogue/sociology/imagining-the-history-of-the-future-unsettling-scientific-stories

Location: Ron Cooke Hub, University of York
Registration: NOW OPEN
Email: unsettling-science@york.ac.uk