Current research projects of the centre include:
Reporting in context: An inter-disciplinary initiative to strengthen maternal health services and surveillance in Ethiopia and Tanzania
CORTH is contributing to the Norwegian Research Council project on Reporting in context: An inter-disciplinary initiative to strengthen maternal health services and surveillance in Ethiopia and Tanzania, led by Astrid Blystad (PI) Karen Marie Moland, Haldis Hauknis at the University of Bergen with 21 others including at CORTH. Maya Unnithan will play a key role in designing the research on social accountability in collaboration with CBOs, professional organisations and associated researchers and Maria Moscati and others faculty and PhD students will facilitate visits to CORTH for junior and senior researchers on the project. The project received 12 million NOK (approx. GBP £1 million) and will run from 2021 to 2025.
Project website: Reporting in Context
Empowering communities through University partnerships in public health: a pilot project in Nepal and the Philippines
In many parts of the world, communities have had little voice in national public health initiatives. Health providers often take a top-down approach, ‘preaching’ to families about how they should live more healthy lives and ignoring their everyday realities. Partnering with universities in Nepal and the Philippines, a team of fourteen international researchers are working on an MRC-funded project based in CORTH that is piloting a new approach to university and community partnership in public health. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the project brings together two educational research centres and two institutes of medicine. The interdisciplinary team from education and public health is setting out to explore how universities can contribute directly to transforming attitudes towards marginalised communities. Bringing together two institutes of medicine - at Tribhuvan University in Nepal and the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines - the project draws on participatory and ethnographic methods to share beliefs and co-construct knowledge around food and nutrition.
You can read about the presentation some of the researcher's gave to CORTH here
Read the latest fieldwork update from co-Investigator Kamal Raj Devkota conducting research in Nepal on their website
Project website: Empowering Communities
Narrating Blood: An international network for cross-cultural research and intervention into blood-related reproductive and adolescent health and care- economies in India, Bangladesh, Ghana and the UK
The proposed programme of work will create a unique network of scholars across the globe to ‘talk about blood’. Drawing together complementary international and national research expertise from across anthropology, psychology, education, geography, migration, medical and public health, the programme will establish a set of analytic and methodological instruments to address the social, economic and health burden of hidden blood related conditions such as anemia in lower and middle income countries. It will focus on the way blood is narrated within policy discourse as well as perceived in terms of weakness (anemia) or stigma (menstrual) in everday family, school and livelihood contexts in poor, rural, urban and migrating populations.
Project website: Narrating Blood international network
Luna Connection: Human rights and environmental implications of menstrual hygiene products
This multidisciplinary and international network explores the social, legal, and environmental implications of menstrual health in Uganda, Kenya and Sudan. The project is focused on the menstrual health and human rights for adolescents (including rights to education), the impact of menstrual products on environmental sustainability and individual rights, and the balance between environmental sustainability and individual rights, including the social and economic sustainability of menstrual hygiene product use.
Project website: Luna Connection
Inherited blood disorders, globalisation and the promise of genomics: an Indian case-study
The re-classification of sickle cell and thalassaemia (recessively inherited blood disorders (IBDs) within ‘prevention and management of birth defects’ by the WHO, in 2011, marks an important moment in the framing of these disorders as an emergent global health crisis. A much higher incidence poses significant healthcare challenges in low and middle income countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa, India and Brazil. India is estimated to have the largest number of IBD carriers in the world (around 42-45 million); where approximately 22,500- 37,000 babies with these disorders are born each year– largely in rural and poor communities with little access to long term care. Despite cheap diagnostic tests and treatments, including new born screening and curative stem cell transplants, available across public and private sectors, only 5- 10 percent of these children receive optimal care in India.
Project website: Inherited blood disorders, globalisation and the promise of genomics: an Indian case-study
Exploring generational changes in family-decision making, son preference and gender expectations among South Asian communities in the UK
Our ethnographic study will investigate generational shifts in family dynamics with regards to son preference and gender roles among British South Asian families. We will focus on the ways in which son preference is practiced, and critically examine whether the educational, socioeconomic, and transnational opportunities available to British South Asian women have shifted gender preferences and expectations over time. The qualitative research phase forms part of a broader interdisciplinary study to understand prenatal sex selection (PSS) against females in the UK. The issue of PSS has been the subject of recent parliamentary controversy as well as media coverage. Yet little is known about how generational shifts in son preference and family-making dynamics are at play in PSS. Clarifying the role of gender preference and family values in PSS will inform appropriate and evidence-based strategies to improve gender equality in the UK.
Project website: Exploring generational changes in family-decision making, son preference and gender expectations among South Asian communities in the UK
'We exist too’: Young Trans Perspectives on Legal Gender Recognition Laws in England and Wales
Maria Moscati (CORTH Co-Director) and Peter Dunne (Bristol Law School) funded by the Socio-Legal Studies Association
The aim of this project is to listen to, document and disseminate the voice of trans young people (13-17 years old) in relation to legal gender recognition laws in England. In particular, the project pursues four main objectives: (i) to investigate the extent to which trans children and adolescents are aware of gender recognition; (ii) to consider how (and whether) legal exclusion impacts young trans lives; (iii) to ask how (and whether) trans youth believe that children should be incorporated into the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA); and (iv) to disseminate the results among young people, policy-makers and academics. Through a participative methodology which employs four main methods (e.g. semi-structured interviews, focus groups, diary writing and artistic expression) this project will cover a gap in the literature and contribute important, original data to children's rights and gender identity discourses.
Building collaboration for Action Ethnography on Care, Disability and Health Policy and Administration of Public Service for Women and Caretakers of Zika virus affected Children in Pernambuco, Brazil
The aim of this Newton funded IDS-CORTH project with research partners in Brazil is to promote well-informed dialogue and collaboration between affected groups and service-providers about the biological, social and emotional effects of Zika. The research will pursue an understanding of therapeutic itineraries of affected populations and their capacity for accessing necessary care, exploring demands and rights. An additional focus will be on analysis of service provision and access, including the perspectives of the providers of relevant health and social care services. This requires creation and dissemination of material that contributes to broaden recognition of service needs, provision and entitlements, and improve intersectoral integration of health and public services, locally and beyond.
YouTube video: Zika virus, access to care and the state in Brazil
YouTube videos: Playlist of talking head interviews
News article and YouTube videos: Five years on from Zika – mothers share their stories about the long-term impacts
Vimeo video: Etnografando Cuidados: Mulheres contam suas historias; Doing Ethnography on Care: Women tell their stories
Sexual Reproductive Health Rights and Pandemics
CORTH is looking to develop an online database of resources on sexual reproductive health rights and pandemics (including COVID-19). We are currently using this space to populate relevant links and information on this research topic.
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Family Planning and Ending Gender-based Violence, Female Genital Mutilation and Child Marriage
Pandemic threatens achievement of the Transformative Results committed to by UNFPA By UNFPA, with contributions from Avenir Health, Johns Hopkins University (USA) and Victoria University (Australia)
UNFPA aims to achieve three world-changing results by 2030, the deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. These are: Ending unmet need for family planning, ending gender-based violence including harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and child marriage, and ending all preventable maternal deaths. This analysis shows how the COVID-19 pandemic could critically undermine progress made towards achieving these goals
Contribution from UNFPA, the United Nation’s Population Fund, to the UK International Development Committee inquiry on Humanitarian crises monitoring: Coronavirus in developing countries
Written evidence of 17 April 2020 for wave 1: current situation and immediate risks and threats. Submitted by Matt Jackson, Director UK Office, UNFPA.
Submission of Research Evidence on Sexual Reproductive Health Rights and COVID-19: Unequal Impact
Submitted to the Women and Equalities Committee Inquiry into ‘Unequal Impact: Coronavirus and the impact on people with protected characteristics’
The ongoing Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has above all exposed systemic inequalities in healthcare and the powerlessness and vulnerability of individuals and groups to access safe and high quality Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) services and care. This submission highlights the importance of framing sexual and reproductive health matters through human rights standards and a reproductive justice framework (especially during pandemics when they can be most easily overlooked). This submission draws on experiences from within the UK as well as India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Belgium and Estonia.
Sexual and reproductive rights in time of the COVID-19 pandemic
Liiri Oja (former visiting researcher at CORTH)
The current pandemic has exposed the importance of framing sexual and reproductive health matters as human rights issues with concrete international standards and accountability.
“Hampered access to safe abortion or contraception & dismissing women's choices are not the “natural” and “inevitable” abstract consequence of the current pandemic, but of the decisions made by people in power (legislators, policy-makers etc).”
Declare abortion a public health issue during pandemic, WHO urged
The Guardian
Charities press World Health Organization to ensure women can get contraception and safe abortions during crisis as millions of women and girls across the world now face an even greater challenge in trying to take care of their own health and bodies.
Coronavirus reveals just how deep macho stereotypes run through society
The conversation
A brief inquiry into how COVID-19 implications will effect men and women differently due to tendencies in lifestyle and behaviour and why we urgently need a gender analysis of government measures to understand the impact it will have on different social groups.
When You're Pregnant During a Pandemic
The Atlantic
Navigating the joys and fears of pregnancy under lockdown in Spain
“Around the world, women are navigating pregnancy during the coronavirus pandemic. They are worried. Their access to reproductive health care might be limited. They are giving birth in hospitals that are on lockdown, many of them separated from family members.”
WHO provide Q&A on COVID-19, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding
World Health Organisation
The WHO provide answers to important public health questions such as: ‘Can Women with COVID-19 breastfeed?’