Author: George Thomas

Girls on the Pitch: Making Change Happen for Women’s Football in Brazil

Posted on by George Thomas

Dr Mark Biram tells us about his project to empower young girls in Brazil through participation in football. Mark is working closely with Brazilian NGO Meninas em Campo (Girls on the Pitch), as well as leading academic on women’s sport in Brazil, Silvana Goellner, to achieve this aim. The project has recently received an AHRC Impact Acceleration Account award, aligns with the University’s efforts to achieve social justice both at home and abroad, and is yet another example of how arts and humanities research can influence change for the better.

Logo for Meninas Em Campo, which features the words in large yellow typeface against a dark background with a silhouette of a girl heading a football in the air in the middle of the picture.
Meninas Em Campo, translates as Girls on the Pitch in Portuguese

With help from the AHRC Impact Acceleration Account, in collaboration with a Brazilian NGO Meninas em Campo and leading academic on women’s sport in Brazil, Silvana Goellner, we are designing a project aimed at the empowerment of young girls through participation in football from a young age. Our project will raise awareness of crucial social, economic and logistical barriers which currently discourage or prevent girls from participating in football, providing practitioners with a blueprint to replicate the work of Meninas Em Campo (Girls on the Pitch), a project which uses football as a vehicle for the empowerment of girls and to help them negotiate the difficulties of adolescence.

Meninas Em Campo has proved itself to be a highly successful proactive example of promoting gender equality through both discourse and practice. It is a non-profit organisation located in Butantã, São Paulo which offers a space for 9-17 year old girls to develop as footballers. The project is financed by Colégio Santa Cruz and supported by the University of São Paulo. Meninas Em Campo is the largest grassroots socially motivated girls football project, outside of those of the big clubs.

Why is this research important?

Whilst carrying out ethnographic research with Santos FC Women in 2018 & 2019 I became aware of the lack of formalised spaces for girls to play the game from an early age. At present, all major Brazilian clubs have a women’s team, in order to comply with national and international regulations. However, there is still a lacuna in provision for younger girls. Projects like Meninas em Campo provide a blueprint which can be replicated elsewhere.

What does the research project involve?

The project involves producing and disseminating materials which practitioners can use to attract girls to playing the game in the first instance, and to engage them with the wider issues attached to gender and other inequalities through the lens of sport. The project intends to engage with secondary schools across Brazil showcasing the best practices of Meninas em Campo and providing the schools with a range of materials which they can use to develop their own provision for girls’ football.

What are the next steps for Girls on the Pitch?

After the initial scoping trip in January, we have already applied for a further round of funding with a view to producing a guide for practitioners on how best to optimise opportunities to raise issues of gender inequality, problems faced by girls during adolescence and how best to engage the public and private sector into investing in the women’s game. This guide is led by the findings of Dr. Mark Biram’s PhD thesis Women’s Club Football in Brazil and Colombia: A Critical Analysis of Players, Media and Institutions and by the work of Hispanic, Portuguese & Latin American Studies PhD candidate Júlia Belas Trindade, who has published a series of Guardian articles on the growth of the women’s game.

We wish Mark every success with Girls on the Pitch and look forward to seeing how the research project develops.

Dr Mark Biram is an early career researcher and teaching associate in the Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies. To find out more about Mark’s research, please email mark.biram@bristol.ac.uk.

‘It’s hard to think…’: Introducing the EPIC project studying better ways to hear patient voices

Posted on by George Thomas

By Professor Havi Carel, Department of Philosophy

A fellow patient was talking about a consultation that followed an examination, when she was still wearing the hospital gown. She felt that it was hard for her to offer her opinions, say what she wanted, and ask questions about her condition, because, as she poignantly put it, ‘it’s hard to think without your pants on!’. 

How do we think, speak, ask questions and convey our views in different situations? This brief account opens questions about how patients are listened to, and how we can work together with health professionals to ensure that they are not only listened to but that what they say plays a key role in decision making processes in healthcare contexts. 

Some patients have reported that their testimonies and perspectives are ignored, dismissed, or explained away by the healthcare profession. These experiences are classified by philosophers as ‘epistemic injustices’ because, in some cases, they are based on prejudice and can jeopardize patient care and undermine trust in healthcare staff and systems.  

A new project I am leading with collaborators from the universities of Nottingham, Birmingham, and Swansea – ‘epistemic injustice in healthcare’ (EPIC) – will study this problem is its general form: why some patient voices are ignored and what healthcare systems can do to overcome this problem. The project is funded by a Wellcome Discovery Award, and will run for six years, with a budget of £2.6 million. 

The project will include case studies from a range of illnesses, theoretical research, events, focus groups, the creation of a network with patients and health professionals, postdoctoral positions, summer schools, and publications. The project aims to identify practical measures for the benefit of patients and healthcare practitioners alike. 

The core team also includes Professor Sheelagh McGuinness (Bristol), an authority on gender and the law in relation to healthcare, Professor Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham), an expert in philosophy and psychiatry, Professor Matthew Broome (Birmingham), an academic NHS psychiatrist, and Dr Ian James Kidd (Nottingham) whose joint work with me pioneered the study of epistemic injustices in healthcare. 

The EPIC team will be completed by eight postdoctoral researchers and a range of other researchers and collaborators from Swansea, City and Aston Universities, and the Universities of Bologna and Ferrara in Italy, making a team of around 30 researchers. 

The six case studies will include labour pain, vaccination in immigrant children, young people and mental health, neurodiversity, cancer and depression, and dementia. 

Professor Broome will lead a case study on youth mental health. He said: “This project will help young people with psychosis develop better relationships with clinicians, and to gain agency in determining their treatment, and ultimately improve outcomes.” 

EPIC will also work closely with patients and service users. Professor Bortolotti added: “It is especially important for people with a mental health diagnosis to contribute to shared knowledge concerning their symptoms and treatment. We will challenge the assumption that they are irrational or disconnected from reality, and so not worthy of being listened to.” 

Dr Kidd said: “EPIC will also involve theoretical work elaborating on the concept of epistemic injustice. We have greatly expanded resources for conceptualising the variety of epistemic injustices. EPIC will contribute to that enrichment as well as benefitting from it.” 

The project will begin in September 2023 and we wish Havi and the rest of the team every success.

Professor Havi Carel, Department of Philosophy, is a philosopher of medicine and an expert on the experience of illness. 

The Centre for Health, Humanities and Science: Who we are and what we do

Posted on by George Thomas

By Professor Ulrika Maude, Director of the Centre for Health, Humanities and Science

The Centre for Health, Humanities and Science (CHHS) focuses on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research at the intersection of the humanities, health, medicine, and science. The CHHS was inaugurated in 2017 and it has almost two hundred members from across Bristol University’s six Faculties and from the NHS. It runs a regular research seminar with speakers from across the UK as well as from abroad, and hosts workshops, an annual lecture, public debates, mentoring lunches, funding workshops, postgraduate-led activities, and university-wide networking events.

CHHS members are at the forefront of developments in medical humanities research, disseminating their results through academic publications, events and public engagement activities. With the support of the Wellcome Trust and the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute, the CHHS has provided seed-corn funding for a diverse range of research projects, including grief and mourning; the senses; chronic conditions and their narratives; and health and illness in colonial film archives.

One CHHS seedcorn-funded project, Becoming Elizabeth Blackwell, centres on the Bristol-born doctor and social campaigner Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) – the first British woman to be registered as a doctor by the General Medical Council, in 1859. The project has brought together Bristol academics, a playwright and theatre director, medical students and others to produce a playscript that will re-tell and celebrate Blackwell’s life and achievements.

Several CHHS members are currently involved in collectively writing a book on Key Concepts in Medical Humanities (forthcoming, 2024), which will provide a critical introduction to concepts such as ‘health’, ‘illness’, ‘contagion’, ‘feeling’, ‘neurodiversity’, ‘disability’, and ‘dying’, as well as offering chapters on key methodologies such as ‘Black Health Humanities’, ‘Graphic Medicine’, ‘Medicine and the Arts’ and ‘Narrative Medicine’. ‘Health’, for instance, is by no means a transparent concept, and the CHHS’s former Benjamin Meeker Professor, Alexandra Parvan, argues that ‘health cannot be taken merely as the outcome of biological tests or a clean medical sheet, nor should it necessarily be understood as a state restricted to the those designated as clinically healthy.’ Rather, Parvan argues for a nuanced conception of health, one that is ‘accessible to all’.

Current large-scale research initiatives at the CHHS include Sensing Spaces of Healthcare, led by historian Victoria Bates. Poor hospital design has a negative impact on healthcare outcomes, and the project seeks to rethink the NHS Hospital through the body and the senses, focusing on the lived experience of patients, visitors, and hospital staff with the aim of improving hospital design. And a multidisciplinary team led by philosopher Havi Carel has recently won Wellcome Trust funding for a six-year project on Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare (EPIC), which aims to address inequalities. Havi says,

‘Some patients have reported that their testimonies and perspectives are ignored, dismissed, or explained away by the healthcare profession. These experiences are classified by philosophers as ‘epistemic injustices’ because, in some cases, they are based on prejudice and can jeopardise patient care and undermine trust in healthcare staff and systems.’

EPIC aims to identify practical measures that can be taken for the benefit of patients and healthcare practitioners alike.

The Good Grief Festival, inaugurated in 2020, focuses on supporting those affected by the shared experience of bereavement and grief – topics that have for too long been considered taboo. Led by Lesel Dawson (English) and Lucy Selman (Bristol Medical School), ‘Good Grief’ regularly organises talks, interviews, webinars and workshops for the general public concentrating on the ways in which the crushing experience of grief can be shared and managed.

Notable projects from recent years include The Heart of the Matter exhibition, which toured the UK in 2018. The exhibition grew from artist Sofie Layton’s residency at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and was co-organised by CHHS Advisory Board member and bioengineer Giovanni Biglino. The artworks in the exhibition were inspired by young patients with heart conditions – as well as their families and doctors – and it invited visitors to discover the extraordinary complexity, intricacy and beauty of the heart as an organ.

For many years now the Centre has been involved in medical education through the Intercalated BA in Medical Humanities, an optional one-year degree for students of Medicine and Veterinary Science, taught jointly by English and Philosophy and directed by Advisory Board member, John Lee (English). With a wide range of international collaborators and an International Advisory Board, our members are also active in public engagement work through collaborations with the NHS, patient groups, and charities as well as museums, public gardens, libraries, and other cultural organisations.

For more information about the CHHS, please contact the Centre’s administrator, Elizabeth Gourd (e.c.gourd@bristol.ac.uk).

Professor Ulrika Maude, Centre for Health, Humanities and Science Director

Black Lecturer – Philip Leverhulme Prize

Posted on by George Thomas

By Dr Josie Gill, Associate Professor in Black British Writing, School of Humanities

With thanks to The Leverhulme Trust for their consent to republish piece in February 2023 newsletter on ArtsMatter platforms.

Fewer than 1% of professors at UK universities are black. The implications of this startling statistic have been much debated, and sociologists and educational researchers are increasingly studying the experiences of black academics. As a literary scholar and a black woman, I am interested in exploring narratives about black people in higher education in literature, memoir and life writing. While many such accounts exist in the US, there are far fewer literary and autobiographical representations of black British academic life, no doubt a reflection of the fact that there are, and have historically been, so few of us. Black British writing about UK education has tended to focus on the school level; for example, E.R. Braithwaite’s To Sir, With Love (1959), Dillibe Onyeama’s Black Boy at Eton (1972) and Beryl Gilroy’s Black Teacher (1976). 

Photograph of Josie Gill, smiling, looking off to the left.
Image Credit: Artur Tixiliski

I am using my Leverhulme Prize funds to write a book called Black Lecturer, which will bring my own experiences of working in higher education into conversation with fictional and non-fictional writing about black British experiences of education. I aim to illuminate the ways in which black academics move through university life, as a means to examine the institutional and research cultures that characterise twenty-first-century UK academia. This project includes a close look at the politics of race in my own discipline, literary studies, and how black British writing has been historically addressed within it. Using the history of the English department at the University of Bristol as a case study, my book will connect personal reflection with literary, disciplinary and institutional analysis to explore the significance of race in higher education.  

My approach to writing this book differs significantly from my previous work. I aim to draw parallels between the strategies, structures, affects and language that characterise my everyday experience as a black lecturer; literary methodologies; and the characteristics of institutional culture. The book will be organised around a series of themes which traverse these areas and will model, in its approach and structure, a methodology for literary research in which the archive is expanded to include my emails, where textual analysis includes institutional statements and departmental strategy, and close reading moves beyond text to include bodies and interpersonal interactions. I hope my research will contribute to ongoing discussions about how we study English Literature and demonstrate how accounts of the black British experience can inform this debate.