5A. Room 1 — Medical Humanities: Spaces of Care
Chair: Niall Boyce, Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing, Birkbeck
Niro Amin
‘The “Just Culture” Revolution: Developing the Dialogue of “Learn not Blame”’
Becka Hudson
‘Permanent crisis: prisoner health research in double lockdown’
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This paper explores the epistemological and pedagogical challenges to creating a ‘just culture’ in the NHS. It is known that disciplinary action following patient safety events can have deleterious impact on practitioner wellbeing, and on occasion lead to doctor feeling ‘burnt-out’ depressed and in extreme cases suicidal.Dr Cicely Cunningham’s definition of a ‘just culture’ describes an organisation that treats staff and patients ‘consistently and fairly’ demonstrating the ethos of Learn Not Blame, a campaign launched by Doctors Association UK (DAUK) in November 2018. In response to this call for a ‘just culture’ NHS Resolutions published a charter, Being Fair: supporting a just and learning culture for patients and staff following incidents in the NHS. This charter has identified three areas for change — addressing the fear around disciplinary action; addressing inequity and discrimination; tackling incivility and bullying within healthcare. The implementation of the charter and campaign is dependent on developing an alternate episteme and pedagogical approach to develop a culture of ‘learn not blame’.I offer two concepts from a critical practice-based medical humanities episteme that have the potential to develop a vocabulary that moves away from inarized scape-goating. Firstly, Julia Kristeva’s concept of the ‘subject in process’, which suggests that the person-centred approach of clinical care is one of ‘becoming’ so that clinical practice can be mapped on a continuum rather than a dichotomy of cure or care, and secondly, Donna Haraway’s concept of ‘tentacular thinking’. This describes ‘life lived along lines’ but supported by deep unseen structures. Both these concepts enable a productive dialogue of restorative just culture which asks ‘who are hurt, what do they need and whose obligation is it to meet that need?’Niro Amin: I am a practising primary care physician and medical educator. The focus of my thesis is physician wellbeing and how this is enacted in intersubjective relationships in clinical practice. I am keen to disclose the narrative voice of the wounded healer.
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Mental health amongst imprisoned people in the UK is in a state of permanent crisis. For several years, self harm rates have been at record highs, and the vast majority of imprisoned people carry some form of mental health diagnosis with them throughout their time in prison. The conditions of prison itself are evidenced to contribute to this crisis, and access to mental healthcare remains slow, sparse and fraught with concerns around ‘offender management’; prisoners’ punishment and governance are always bound up with attempts at care.Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, these conditions have significantly intensified. Lockdowns see imprisoned people in their cells for upwards of 23.5 hours a day, no visitation from friends and family and increasingly restricted activities. This year, over 80,000 people have been held in de facto solitary confinement for months, and recent data on self harm in prisons shows this is having detrimental effects on imprisoned people’s health.This contribution to the Encounters conference considers what prison research of value and integrity looks like under these conditions. Covering methodological and political concerns from the tradition of prison ethnography, and drawing on the work of disability justice and prison abolitionist scholars, I reflect on the metamorphosis of my own PhD research over the last year to assess some methodological and political implications of prison research in a pandemic. Ultimately, I ask what happens to prison ethnography when the very conditions such research seeks to investigate preclude meaningful contact with a field site, and what this double lockdown means for researchers interested in accurately representing prisoners’ struggles.Becka Hudson is an MPhil student in the second year of her studies for a Research Degree in Birkbeck Law School’s Criminology Department. Her research considers the conditions in which the majority of people imprisoned in the UK are diagnosed with some form of personality disorder, placing the development of British psychiatry and its prison estate in the historical context of Empire. Becka also works as a campaigner on issues around state racism and civil liberties in the UK.
5B. Room 2 — Research During a Pandemic: The Shifting Face of Research at SOAS
Sarah Gray (Chair), Becky Winstanley, Erum Nazeer Dahar, Morag Wright, and Tariq Mir
SOAS holds a distinct status as an institution focusing on—though not limited to—the study of the communities, histories, religions, societies, languages, musics, and politics of Asia, Africa, and the Near and Middle East.As such, upon the university’s incorporation into CHASE as a full member from the new academic year in 2019, a cohort of new researchers, all with a distinct range of experiences, academic experiences and research interests, were brought into the CHASE fold. This wide range of academic interests comes with a unique set of research needs which, upon the commencement of our doctoral research, were in the process of being facilitated.However, Covid-19 has affected the ways this research is and will be conducted in the foreseeable future due to these unique research needs: with research ranging from deskbound archival text and translation work to national and international fieldwork involving active engagement with communities, these projects are having to be changed and adapted in what are unprecedented circumstances. This might mean complete shifts in methodology and research questions, dramatic changes to the ways in which resources and wider academic communities are accessed, and significant reconsiderations about how to conduct fieldwork safely and securely in a post-Covid-19 world.
+ Session info & bios
This panel will hope to address through open discussion some of these problems and offer insights into how we as a cohort with individual and particular research needs have had to reassess, readapt, and redevelop our relationship with the wider world in order to continue pursuing research.The panel will be chaired by Sarah Gray (CHASE-funded History, SOAS) who will prompt and also engage in key discussion points before opening the session to our online audience for questions and further discussion. Some of the questions we hope to consider will be:
- A brief introduction to the projects of the SOAS 2019 CHASE cohort;
- How each of these individual projects have been affected by Covid-19;
- How each of us have dealt with or in the process of finding solutions to some of these problems;
- Reflections on “decolonisation” and “knowledge production” in a post-Covid-19 research culture;
- Positive impacts and the changing face of academia and research in a post-Covid-19 world.
Sarah Gray (History) is researching how legal action over colonial wrongdoings has changed narratives of decolonisation.Becky Winstanley (Linguistics) is undertaking a study of the multilingual language practices amongst the UK’s Bangladeshi diaspora in Tower Hamlets.Erum Nazeer Dahar (Gender Studies) is completing a study of the role played by Islamic feminism on inclusive UK-based Islamic organisations.Morag Wright (History) is researching how racial capitalism was codified in the 19th century through the legal reconstruction of the indentured Indian family.Tariq Mir (History) is researching the state of Islamic philosophical theology in the premodern Islamic East following the Mongol Conquests.
5C. Room 3 — Creative Writing 2: Embodied Experience
Chair: Laura Kaye
Kate Pickering
‘There is a Miracle in Your Mouth’
Caroline Millar
‘Borders, Boundaries and Barriers: Navigating Inner and Outer Journeys Along the Thames Estuary’
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I will present a brief overview of my research and read an excerpt of recent experimental writing. In my project, I examine the embodied experience of the congregant within the spectacular site of the Evangelical megachurch (defined as 2,000+ congregants in weekly attendance). Evangelicalism is a world-wide, rapidly spreading movement with megachurch congregation size reaching to the tens and hundreds of thousands globally. My writing practice draws on the specific site of North America’s largest megachurch, Lakewood in Houston, Texas, which has a weekly attendance of up to 52,000 congregants. I combine several threads: the mythic history of Lakewood and the Osteen family within the context of Houstonian/ Texan history; an account of a tropical cyclone bearing down on the site, based on research into Hurricane Harvey; and lastly the megachurch site as a building-body that gradually develops self-awareness. The site eventually floods and is submerged, the water bringing with it a transformation of the site and a reorientation toward ‘gaia’.Kate Pickering is a London based artist, writer and CHASE-funded PhD researcher in the Departments of Art and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths. She investigates the entanglement of body, belief and site through research into American megachurch Evangelicalism. See kate-pickering.com and instagram.com/writing_a_body_of_belief.
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‘We’re living on the borderline between the natural world…and that other world which is generated by our brain cells. And so clearly that fault line runs through our physical and emotional makeup…where these tectonic plates rub against each other are the sources of pain.’ —W.G. SebaldThis paper will discuss the evolution of my research project, The Same River Twice, a creative/critical journey along the real and imagined pathways of the Thames Estuary. Subject to the twice-daily inundation of the tides, the estuarial edges of Kent are shifting terrains where land and water meet and part. Neither wholly land nor sea, they are in between, liminal places of instability and mutability, a place where borders and boundaries fluctuate and reshape.During this paper, I will read an excerpt from my work in progress and discuss some of the tensions inherent in navigating a real and imagined place; tensions between embodied experience and imagination, historical research versus freedom to reimagine the past, tensions of form (am I writing fiction, autofiction, creative non-fiction and what do these labels mean?), permission and transgression. I will also discuss how my methodology has evolved over the past year and is helping to shape the voice and form of the creative work.Caroline Millar is a second year PhD candidate in Text, Research and Practice at the Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Kent. Her work has been published in The Guardian, Elsewhere: A Journal of Place, The New Writer, Poetry News and Litmus. She teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at Canterbury Christchurch University.
5D. Room 4 — Three-Minute Thesis 3: Society and Culture
Chair: Molly Ackhurst, Department of Criminology, Birkbeck
Carson Cole Arthur, Department of Criminology, School of Law, Birkbeck
‘Testimony and Accountability in the Inquests of Black People Killed in UK Police Custody’
(social justice; coroner’s courts; racial violence) Joseph Radcliffe, Department of History, Birkbeck
‘The Role of the Seamen’s Boarding House in Early Black Community Formation in British Port Cities, 1894–1939’
(Black history; migration; community formation; identity; social history)Michela Valmori, Department of Cultures and Languages, Birkbeck, University of London
‘A New Feminist Perspective in Italian American Literature: An Investigation into the Literary Representation of Gender Violence’
(immigration studies; Italian diaspora; gender)Shelley Saggar, ‘ Centre for Indigenous and Settler-Colonial Studies, University of Kent
‘Museum as Medicine? Healing and Heritage in Contemporary Native American and Maori Literature and Film’
(decolonisation; museum practice; indigenous contexts) Craig Ryder, SOAS
‘Algorithms at War: How is Trust Being Renegotiated in Post-Truth Sri Lanka?’
(ethnography; deep-fakes; fake news; social media)Fred Wendi Shan, Courtauld Institute of Art
‘Gaming, Performance, Parody: Contemporary Chinese Art and Global Ludic Culture’
(digital media; fandom; experience economy; ethnography; linguistics) Jon Winder, School of History, Kent
’Why Do Children’s Playgrounds Exist?’
(nature; city; history) Ayisha Ahmed, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS
‘Reforming Education and Reforming Subjects: Education Reform in Ghana (2007–2020) and Senior High School Student Aspirations’
(anthropology; education studies; subjectification; youth; waithood)
5E. Room 5 — Climate Justice Network Open Meeting
Cliff Hammett, Elly Clarke, Marleen Boschen, Ellie Robson
In this meeting, we’ll explore together how our research environment has shifted in the pandemic, and how it has altered our perspective on the Climate Crisis, from a personal, academic, activist or another perspective. It will also be a chance to find out about the group’s plans for the future and to get more involved if you wish.
+ Bios
Marleen Boschen: Department of Media, Communications & Cultural Studies, GoldsmithsElly Clarke: Department of Art, GoldsmithsCliff Hammett: School of Media, Music & Film, SussexEllie Robson: Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck