CareVisions: Enacting the Feminist Ethics of Care in Empirical Research

ABSTRACT

CareVisions (2022–2026) is an interdisciplinary researcj project reflecting on care experiences during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic to re-imagine care relations, practices and policies in Ireland and internationally. Inspired by feminist ethics of care perspectives and Irish traditions of relatedness and living in the community, epitomised in the quote: Is ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine (We live in each other's shadow and in each other's shelter) (Higgins, M. 2021. Letter from the President of Ireland to the President of the United States of America, 20thJanuary 2021. Accessed 18 January 2022. https://twitter.com/PresidentIRL/status/1352162151817949184?s=20Q2), CareVisions prioritises the creation of deliberative and participative spaces to enable care debates from a wide and diverse range of voices. Thus, the project's essence required examination of and attention to ‘care-full' internal and external working relations. Informed by an advisory group comprised of care practitioners, researchers and activists, CareVisions' ethical statement recognises that adopting this approach requires a focus on ‘a dialogic and narrative form of practice' (Barnes et al. 2015b:238).This paper focuses on the process of conceptualising, operationalising and illustrating a feminist ethics of care from the early stages of the project’s development and in approaching its empirical studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Care
• feminist ethics of care
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.carevisionsucc.ie/

2 https://www.ucc.ie/en/iss21/

3 https://www.ucc.ie/en/research/support/ethics/socialresearch/

4 link to CareVisions' Ethical Statement https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60794fe9b05e0b4b67aebfc7/t/6241c666f1d2c87853dd8d68/1648477799693/CareVisions+Ethical+Statement+.pdf

5 The critiques of Direct Provision and Dispersal are many and include those of academics, advocacy organisations and legal sources.

6 This committee was set up by the Dáil (the Irish parliament) to consider and take evidence on Ireland’s response to COVID-19. It operated from May to October 2020.

7 Information on MASI can be found here: https://www.masi.ie/

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Carolan Trust.

Notes on contributors

Jacqui O’Riordan

Jacqui O’Riordan is a lecturer at the School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, Ireland, where she works across a broad range of undergraduate, postgraduate and adult education programmes. Her research interests are largely located in qualitative participatory methodologies developed in co-operation with community participants and stakeholders. Research contributions in the care field include analysis of care and experiences of carers. She has worked with civil society organisations in researching experiences of carers, and less visible aspects and caring contexts such as supporting mental wellbeing in family and caring across home and institutions. She has also developed postgraduate seminars to further conceptual understanding of caring relations and dynamics. More broadly her work centres on a range of issues concerning gender, equality and diversity in local and global contexts. It includes analyses of aspects of women’s livelihoods; conditions experienced by a range of marginalised communities; child trafficking; care for children; migrant children’s experiences and interactions in education; community supports for people, younger and older, living with disabilities.

Felicity Daly

Felicity Daly is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences in the twenty-first Century working on the CareVisions project. Felicity holds a Doctor of Public Health (Dr PH) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her doctoral thesis examined the participation of health policy stakeholders, particularly civil society actors concerned with the sexual health of women who have sex with women, in the development of South Africa’s National Strategic Plans on HIV. She conducted her thesis as a Research Associate at the Health Economics and HIV Research Division of the University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa. Prior to joining UCC Felicity was a researcher at the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Felicity co-created a mixed-methods research agenda within an international development project funded by the UK government to improve socio-economic inclusion among sexual minority populations in five sub-Saharan African cities. In addition to her work as a researcher Felicity has over two decades professional experience in the fields of global health and social development. She has worked extensively as an independent consultant providing policy analysis, programme evaluation and technical advice to UN agencies and non-governmental organisations

Cliona Loughnane

Cliona Loughnane is a postdoctoral researcher on the 3-year CareVisions project in the Institute of Social Science in the twenty-first Century, University College Cork (UCC). Previously, Cliona worked for more than 15 years in research and policy positions in NGOs and the health service. Most recently, she worked as women’s health coordinator for Ireland’s leading women’s organisation, working to achieve women’s reproductive rights and access to healthcare. Cliona was a member of the Government’s Women’s Health Taskforce, co-chair of the Women’s Mental Health Network, and with NGO and academic colleagues established the Health Reform Alliance. Throughout her career, Cliona has been active social researcher, leading and involved in a wide-range of projects, including on women’s mental health, healthcare reform, the role of social justice advocacy in policymaking, and women’s experiences of caring during COVID-19. Cliona undertook her Doctorate, a critical discourse analysis problematising Big Food’s involvement in obesity policymaking, at the School of Applied Social Studies, UCC. Her research interests include feminist methodologies, citizen involvement in health reform and corporate influences on public policymaking.

Carol Kelleher

Carol Kelleher is a lecturer in service design at management at University College Cork (UCC). She co-founded and co-chairs the Institute of Social Science in the twenty-first Century (ISS21) CARE21 research cluster in UCC. She is committed to participatory action research approaches which place carers’ voices and experiences at the centre of policy and practice. Carol is Principal Investigator of the PPI Ignite Network in UCC, which aims to build capacity for high quality PPI in UCC and amongst wider society. She is also the recipient of three Irish Research Council New Foundations research awards which focussed on supporting Young Carers, Former Carers and promoting PPI research with family carers. Her research on caregiving has appeared in the Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research and Marketing Theory, amongst others.

Claire Edwards

Claire Edwards in Lecturer in Social Policy in the School of Applied SocialStudies/Institute for Social Science in the twenty-first Century, University College Cork. Her research and teaching is primarily concerned with geographical and sociological understandings of disability and the dynamics of socio-spatial in/justice in disabled people’s everyday lives. She has published widely on this in a range of journals including Health and Place, Critical Social Policy, Sociology, Social and Cultural Geography, Urban Studies, Social Science and Medicine and BioSocieties.