‘Birth work’ accompaniment and PhD supervision: an alternative feminist pedagogy for the neoliberal university

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we discuss how ‘with-woman’ midwifery and doula care provide resources for rethinking the theory and practice of academic supervision from a feminist perspective. We identify how the tradition of accompaniment in both birth work and academia is under threat given the economic reforms facing public sector education and health care. Despite these pressures, we suggest that the practice of focusing on the pregnant woman as an ‘expert’ on her pregnancy rather than on the foetus or the delivery – that is, the ‘product’ of her pregnancy – would help transform how we theorise and practise academic supervision. The aim of the supervisory relation would mean supporting the student’s direct relation to the intellectual, embodied and emotional process of completing the PhD. Such an approach suggests ways in which the pedagogical practices of contemporary midwifery and doula care can inform academic supervision in the neoliberal university.

KEYWORDS:

• Supervision
• accompaniment
• relationality
• neoliberalism
• midwife
• doula

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Maria Fannin is Reader in Human Geography in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research focuses on the social and economic dimensions of health, medicine and technology, particularly in relation to reproduction and women’s health. She has conducted research on commercial cord blood banking, concepts of hoarding and exchange in the biological tissue economy, and feminist geographical approaches to a ‘bodily commons’ in a post-genomic age. She is currently researching the multiple forms of value attached to human placental tissue in the biosciences, medicine and alternative health practices.

Maud Perrier is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research interests include feminist pedagogies, emotions, food, class and contemporary mothering. She is currently investigating women food social entrepreneurs in Sydney, Australia with Elaine Swan. She has co-edited a special issue of Australian Feminist Studies with Maria Fannin, entitled ‘Refiguring the PostMaternal’ which investigates how neoliberalism refigures the relationship between feminisms and the maternal. She has published in Sociology, Sociological Review, Sociological Research Online, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Humanities, Gender and Education and Feminist Formations.

ORCID

Maria Fannin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8922-2499

Maud Perrier http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8531-5092

Notes

1. Doula services have also been trialled in US hospitals to provide support for critically ill older adults (Balas, Gale, and Kagan 2004) and for end-of-life care (Corporon 2011).