Friday 11 July 2014

The alternative festival......


Festival to many mean tents, entertainment, drinking, socialising and general merry making, this was definitely a festival with a difference.  The Holiday Inn for a start, with my room buddy and fellow PhD student Dana to keep me company we thoroughly enjoyed the facilities and opportunity to just spend time rather selfishly reading, swimming without the apron strings being constantly tugged at...bliss! We did enjoy the odd glass of wine with dinner and networked over lunches.  As for the entertainment I did manage to enjoy a few of the presentations but overall I was disappointed with the lack of imagination and creativity when individuals were disseminating findings and experience... death by powerpoint was definitely a feature but Both myself and Dana made the most of our time in Oxford and took our own useful learning points away.


Oxford is amazing! This is my first time in the centre of Oxford and being within a university campus I feel like I've walked onto the set of a Harry potter movie... Hats and gowns, culture, gargoyles, beautiful buildings. The whole place just oozes learning and all round cleverness and affluence.  This is definitely the place to be if you want to expand your thinking however on the first day I found it all quite overwhelming and didn't feel like I belonged at all.  I've been wrestling with an internal struggle since first gaining a place on this PhD programme.  How could I, Carol Richardson with the speckled childhood on a rough council estate with lived early experiences that should by all accounts led me to either further poverty, prison or addiction, be here surrounded by all these inspirational individuals that seem so comfortable in this setting, that speak so eloquently and are so academically competent.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be labeled a victim but I am continuously trying to understand my own identity in order to make me a more reflexive researcher and the process isn't always a comfortable one.  To be honest, I'm quite bored of hearing and telling my own sorry stories and don't think I am entirely deserving of the label; the girl that dragged herself up by her bootlaces and is now doing well... In the words of Tim Minchin; it's all luck... And if you haven't listened to this man before, please please watch this clip... It all makes beautiful sense!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yoEezZD71sc&feature=kp

So, will I ever escape this image? should I even bother trying? During this festival I've heard speakers that have allowed me to settle with the idea that the more you understand how you are perceived by others, the greater your understanding of the way they will communicate with you.  An imprint of your own personal ideals, morals and influences will always be present within qualitative research, the trick is to be aware of it and make the effort to remain impartial and truly honest with yourself. One particular speaker highlighted how she had been demonised in the media and will be forevermore associated with under age sex and was even labeled a paedophile as her research was on the sensitive subject of male teachers lived experiences of accusations from students claiming that they had been abused. The cases that she had covered included some interesting methodology (this is after all what the festival was all about!) where she blended all the stories then fabricated a new one that encompassed all the stories through the eyes of one fictional family. This allowed the participants to remain truly anonymous and is referred to as a composite fiction approach. The other advantage was that even though all of the individuals involved had been exonerated within a court of law of course she could not make a cast iron guarantee that they were in fact innocent. She had to make sure that she did not provide an opportunity for these individuals to create a new victim identity that they could use for personal gain. This researcher and distinguished professor, Pat Sikes revealed that she had in fact had a relationship with her teacher at school and had later married him.  This personal lived experience had given her a real personal insight into the traumas that extended to family, friends and colleagues and could have been a real advantage when undertaking this research.  Her discussion about the ethical process was very insightful especially an astonishing comment from an ethics committee that stated at one point that "teenagers never lie about sexual abuse", this challenged the ethics process and allowed me to be aware once again of my own morals, personal knowledge  and life experience.

This concept was cemented when listening to another account and study headed up by a researcher once again looking at an emotive, sensitive subject.. Her name is Dr Denise Turner from the University of Sussex and she had put together her presentation in order to try and help researchers tackle difficult or challenging subjects.  I figured that asking a woman about her personal weight issues would definitely fit into this category so went along with the hope of gathering some tips.  The lecture focussed on the research that Denise had undertaken on parents and families experiences after the unexpected death of a child, looking at issues such as how they were treated by police, social workers and other professionals.  She used a method of data analysis called Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method. Now I know that sounds rather posh but essentially it looks at a clear way of deriving meaning from a series of personal rich stories. In order to add credibility and strength to her interpretation for her thesis she engaged a panel of professional and lay members to look through and discuss the transcripts with some interesting feedback that gave her a very different point of view from the one that she had originally held. He reasoning behind this was that she had experienced the death of her own 9 year old boy and by opening out her interpretation she could minimise the risk of her work being misconstrued as some sort of victim art or confessional.... It was a very powerful stuff and really did leave a lasting impression on how important it is to understand where oneself sits in any research.


Linking this back to my work, I am now learning to accept that I will be the obese midwife researcher for quite some time...I've noticed that people comment more on the food I eat, the exercise I take and my own lifestyle. I'm often asked for dietary advice and about my own personal weight loss/gain/yo yo journey. In undertaking this study I am developing a new personal identity just as myself and my colleagues did when we became midwives... We have become accustomed to a strangers full obstetric history when we reveal our profession,with all the juicy details of their birth experiences, no holds barred. It's a good job we can listen to anything over lunch, not even a nasty placenta tale can put us off a good spaghetti bolognase.  And for those of you who were wondering what I ate, here are a few of the beautiful meals I tucked into!


Thank goodness the hotel had a gym.....