International Health Humanities Network Membership

Lecturer at a local (Kenyan) iniversity currently preparing to pursue PhD degree in Health Communication with a focus on Alcohol

Professor Margaret McAllister (CMHN, RN, BA, MEd, EdD) is Professor of Nursing at Central Queensland University, in Noosa, Australia. She is an award-winning educator and is experienced in working across disciplines. Her research and teaching focus includes narratives of health and wellbeing, mental health promotion, and transformative learning. She has co-authored several books: The Clinical Helper, Stories in Mental Health, The Resilient Nurse and Solution Focused Nursing. She has published over 150 refereed journal articles and her work has been cited by others over 2000 times. She is currently writing two books:    Paradoxes in Nurses’ Identity, Culture and Image: The Shadow Side of Nursing. London: Routledge; and Empowerment Strategies for Nurses: Developing resilience in practice. New York: Springer.

Associate Professor in the Faculty of Nursing, University of Calgary, Canada

I worked mostly in mental health in my clinical career. Originally from the UK, I worked at a therapeutic community, the Cassel Hospital, where I learned the power of language in caring for patients and the importance of their story for current problems in living and sources of resilience. I worked mostly in older adult mental health after moving to Canada in 1995. I completed my PhD thesis about ideas from Buddhist thought applied to acute care mental health nursing in 2012 and joined the Faculty of Nursing the same year. I am interested in meeting points between nursing and philosophy, particularly the hermeneutic tradition, and how nursing has its own disciplinary history within the wider field of health humanities. 

I am the author of the book Nursing and Humanities, Routledge, 2020. https://www.routledge.com/Nursing-and-Humanities/McCaffrey/p/book/9780367347765 

Academic Leader, Community Engagement University of Wollongong (Australia). Research field is gender, medicine and history and my PhD examined the role of gender in the development of Australian medicine.  I am in the process of developing a medical humanities program for my medical school.  

I am an art therapist and artist with research affiliations with QUT, Access Arts Victoria, and Griffith University. 

A former social worker and with a PhD in Creative Writing, I convened and taught in the Disability Studies stream in the School of Human Services and Social Work from 2011 to 2015. In 2015-2016, I led an NDIS readiness research partnership with Endeavour Foundation to better understand people’s experiences of disability services delivery. I enjoyed a thirty-plus years career as a social worker and policy advisor, and served as a social inclusion advisor in the government and community sectors.

For more details, see http://www.donnamcdonald.com/ 

Professional background in mental health and adult fields of nursing practice. Currently in post as Associate Professor and Academic Lead for Safeguarding with the School of Health Sciences, University of Nottingham, UK. Interest and active lead in the development of a number of arts based initiatives (narratives, drama, storytelling, creative design) focusing on issues/lived experience around dignity, discrimination, domestic abuse and safeguarding.   

I am a writer, filmmaker and educator based in Ipswich, Suffolk. I have a successful track record as a screenwriter digital media practicioner. I have recently been delivering creative media workshops for the InsideOut Community in Ipswich and I am very interested in developing this area of my practice further. 

Originally educated as an historian, my MA dissertation was on the decline of Stourbridge Fair in Cambridge.  My PhD explored the history of the maternity services in Sheffield between 1879-1939.  In 2003 I qualified as a midwife and worked clinically until 2008 when I became a lecturer in Midwifery at the University of Nottingham.  My research interests combine my two areas of expertise, midwifery and history.  I published A Social History of Maternity Care (Routledge) in 2012.  I am now focusing on the trajectory of maternity and midwifery care in England in the period 1960-2000, a time of great flux in the service as care moved from home to hospital and the language of risk and safety dominated the professional discourse around pregnancy and birth.

I am passionate about public engagement and dissemination.  In 2012 I curated an exhibition in Nottingham on midwifery and motherhood which was seen by over 7000 members of the public (http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscripts/2012/01/19/“mothers-and-midwives”-goes-live/).  I have been interviewed for BBC4 documentary on health before the health service (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mytsg).  Most recently I have organised a Wellcome funded meeting exploring the genesis, development and legacy of the seminal report on the maternity services, Changing Childbirth (http://www.rcm.org.uk/midwives/news/changing-childbirth-is-unfinished-business/)

Carmel McKenna (MA MBS TCRG Chartered MCIPD) has been involved in Irish step dancing for over 50 years. During that time, she has acted in multiple, often overlapping, roles including that of dance student, competitor, performer, choreographer, educator, teacher, researcher and research supervisor.
Carmel attained her Irish Dance Teacher’s qualification in 1987. She also holds a MBS in Human Resource Management and a MA in Ethnochoreology, both with 1st Class Hons. and both from the University of Limerick.
Carmel is an active member in, and historian and archivist for, An Chomhdháil na Múinteoirí le Rincí Gaelacha cuideachta faoi Theorainn Ráthaíochta (Congress of Irish Dance Teachers).

Carmel’s varied research interests range from the analysis of gender in Irish dance to examination of issues such as power, politics and influence in Irish dance organizations. More recently, she has acted as research co-supervisor for interdisciplinary research at LIT which stands at the intersection of dance/movement and its application in social care and wider health humanities settings.

Carmel has presented from both a practitioner and academic standpoint at numerous national and international conferences and symposia since 2008.

Research Co-Supervision (MA by Research):
2018 (ongoing): Exploring the psycho-social effects of the introduction of an adaptive Ceili dance activity for people living with dementia and their carers.
2016 to 2018: Analysis of the Loss & Grief experienced by competitive Irish dancers transitioning to Irish dance teaching careers

Professional Memberships: International Council of Dance (CID) at UNESCO International Association of Dance Medicine & Science (IADMS) Irish Medical Humanities Network (IMHN)

Arts & Health Research Cluster (UL/LIT/MIC)

Dance Research Forum Ireland (DRFI) Oral History Network Ireland (OHNI)