Description:
I graduated from Kent University with a BSc Anthropology degree in 2014. I then lived and worked as an English teacher in China for a year, before starting an MSc by research in Medical Anthropology at Durham in 2015, for which I conducted a study in Durham University’s Parent-Infant Sleep Lab.
My current research will be looking at how effectively birthing centres support the transition to parenting in the post-natal period. It will use an ethnographic approach to understand the post-natal experiences of families delivering their infants in a midwifery-led maternity unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary as well as how father presence in the postnatal period influences the dynamic of rooming-in in the Birthing Centre. The project will also trial an intervention to improve parental-infant proximity and contact during the Birth Centre post-natal stay, with the aim of improving breastfeeding outcomes, promoting infant safety, encouraging parent infant synchrony and responsive cue based care.
