Jo Murphy-lawless

Biography

I am a sociologist, lecturing in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin since 2005. I have an established reputation for my work on childbirth and new motherhood in Ireland and internationally. Since joining the School, I have secured over €500,000 as principal investigator or co-investigator. I have a strong record of published research activity, including two single-authored books, a co-edited book of conference papers, thirteen research reports published with an ISBN, sixteen book chapters of which twelve are single authored, and twenty-nine peer and non-peer reviewed journal articles of which seventeen are single-authored. I served on the editorial board of the international journal, Reproductive Health Matters from 1996-2003. I am a member of the EU-wide COST research network, 'Childbirth Cultures, Contexts, and Consequences'. I am also a co-applicant of the now approved ESF Exploratory Workshop, Promoting Normality in Childbirth across Europe. I set up the Birth Project Group as a joint effort for the School with the University of Edinburgh, Napier University and the Birth Resource Centre Edinburgh which has broadened the School's involvement in midwifery education research to include supporting midwifery students post-qualification to counter burn-out. I am coordinating the next event of the Birth Project Group, a two -day international workshop for midwifery students, clinicians, birth educators and birth support people to be held in the School in April, 2010.

Research Interest

My expertise is in the areas of: . childbirth and maternity services . women's health . poverty and social exclusion . illegal drug use . health issues in a globalised world . health care delivery . the uses and problems of risk in scientific discourses . retrieving democratic participation at local levels I have a very strong commitment to using my role as an academic to be an engaged 'public intellectual' responsive to the need for social transformation, social justice, and analysing and mitigating what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has termed 'suffering in contemporary society'. I endeavour to keep these core objectives to the fore in my research agenda. My research has entailed bringing the material impacts of unmet personal and social need into sharp focus for use in the policy-making and teaching arenas where these issues should receive scrupulous evidence-based attention. I have huge experience in generating research proposals in accordance with funders' requirements. I can also attract funding for projects that fall outside commissioned research, but which can produce innovative work, such as the Motherhood and Drugs project based in Dublin's north inner city which focused on local democratic process, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Katherine Howard Foundation. My most recent work in this area has been for the North Inner City Drugs Task Force, a research project exploring the need for greater accountability in benchmarks to measure state actions on illegal drug use and social inclusion. I have an established reputation for my work on childbirth and new motherhood in Ireland and internationally. I am currently working to develop research with a team based in the Rotunda Hospital to explorer women's experiences of non-mainstream antenatal care. I have maintained and developed strong ongoing collaborative international research links. I am a member of the EU-wide research network, 'Childbirth Cultures, Contexts, and Consequences' coordinated from UCLAN in the UK. I also carry out joint research activities with the University of California, Santa Barbara, Women's Studies Department and the Birth Project Group (University of Edinburgh, Napier University and the Birth Resource Centre, Edinburgh). Between 2003 and 2007, I completed two major studies for the Crisis Pregnancy Agency (the first with my colleague, Dr Laury Oaks, an anthropologist from University of California, Santa Barbara), on young Irish women's decision-making on sex, fertility and childbearing, a project which explored the major changes in attitudes of Irish society about sex. The project was located in the School of Nursing and Midwifery Studies, TCD. Findings from this project have relevance for the debate on the future of motherhood and the family, an issue that has emerged as a mainstream concern in many post-industrial societies and one on which I have also published. Dr Oaks and I are currently working to complete the book that follows from this research, The Sally Gardens: Women, Sex and Motherhood in Ireland. As a result of that work, I secured two further research projects on women and sexuality, carried out with my colleague Professor Agnes Higgins. I have broadened the scope of my initial investigations on risk and obstetric science to examine problems within contemporary science regarding risk creation and how civil societies are attempting to make sense of health problems and health risks. I have published work on the problems set by BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and FMD (foot and mouth disease). I was invited to present a paper at the TEAGASC international conference on food safety in 2004. My most recent work on risk centres on the problems and limitations of science and technology in responding to risk. I have participated as principal investigator or co-investigator ontwo proposals on the social meanings of breast cancer.