Videos

Sarah Cunningham-Burley, Co-Director: Hi, I'm Sarah Cunningham Burley, and I am a professor of medical and family sociology at the University of Edinburgh. And I'm also co director of the Centre for Biomedicine Self and Society. The Centre for Biomedicine Self and Society is an interdisciplinary centre that works at the interface of social science and humanities, research, scholarship and engagement, alongside clinical, biomedical and public health research. The things that I really love or am inspired about it, I think, is bringing all our younger or kind of more early career staff, researchers and scholars together to create a really collaborative space where they can learn from each other, and I can learn from them. So I think that just is very generative of a very energetic committed environment.

Ingrid Young, Senior Lecturer: What I really like about CBSS and what I'm able to do in that space is try and challenge some of the really hierarchical and rigid structures of the university. It's about challenging that division between the university as a creator of knowledge and the communities for whom that knowledge is created.

Nicola Boydell, Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow: Yeah, I think one of the brilliant things about the Centre for Biomedicine, self and Society is that it brings together people with really diverse interests, but also with different disciplinary perspectives.

Joana Formosinho, Interdisciplinary Research Fellow: The research group was a really was and is a very exciting and unusual research group. Small, and yet, punchy. How do you say it punching above its weight. I don't know the exact expression.

Chase Ledin, Lecturer: I'm interested because I care about people. I want to give people the knowledge to be able to think critically and openly about what HIV means, what STIs are, what contraception is.

Karissa Patton, Interdisciplinary Research Fellow: Having the support and funding for places like the CBSS is so important, and it fosters really innovative research and collaborative research. ]

Giulia De Togni, Chancellor's Fellow: Regardless of whether you have a degree or not, you have this wealth of experience and knowledge of what you want and what you think is acceptable for the future of care. Please don't be afraid of engaging with us. We're not going to be in our Ivory tower. We're not going to feel superior about anything.

S.C: and I think that's really heartening, too, that we're supporting the development of the next generation of academics who also bring a real energy, a new way of thinking. So it's the whole picture, really, not just the academic staff. 

Nicola Boydell: The  theme  of  past  present  and  future. That's  a  really  interesting  thing. How  does  that  relate  to  my  work? I  think  one  of  the  benefits  of working  in  a  centre  like CBSS  is  that  we are  doing  that  kind of  interdisciplinary  work. So  thinking  about  histories  and futurities  kind of  as  different  aspects  of  the  work.

Karissa Patton: History  offers  more  than  just,  like, lessons  or  examples  or  warnings. And  instead, these  historical  stories  should  be sort  of  inspiration  for  thinking critically  about  now  and  the  future.

Chase Ledin: So  obviously,  COVID  emerged  in 2020,  and  we  saw  lockdowns. We  saw  changes  in  public  health  policies. We  saw  changes  in individual  and  group and  community  behaviours. And  as  part  of my  research  as  well  as  engagement, I've  been  thinking  about what  it  might  mean  to have  sex  and  sexual  health and  sexual  well  being during  COVID  19, are  people  having  sex  in  lockdown? Are  they  having  sex  in  their  shaded  spaces? Are  they  going  out  into  communities  and breaking  the  laws  to  have  sex  or intimacy  or  pleasure  or relationships  beyond  the  law.

K.P: Historical  perspective  can  kind of  push  that  and  ask,  how  did  we  get  here? And  that  can  help  us think  about  not  just,  like, why  healthcare  systems  or patient  experiences  are  the  way  they  are  now, but  also  how  can  we  think about  this  thing  critically to  think  about  the  future?

C.L: Instead  of  taking  the  kind  of  traditional public  health  approach  of  saying, because  it's  illegal, it  can't  happen  kind  of  thing, my  queer  approach  is  saying  that  it's happening  regardless  of  whether or  not  you  want  it  to  happen, and  we  should  be  mindful  and  we  should be  curious  about  the  things that  are  happening  there. So  that  work,  which kind  of  continues  into  the  present, is  thinking  about  things. There  are  foundational  things  about  us as  humans  that  we  are  drawn  to. And  one  of  those  things  is  pleasure is  desire  is  the  ability to  connect.

N.B: With  my current  work  around  abortion, that's  a  really  central element  of  it  is  thinking  about how  histories  of  abortion  impact and  shape  current  practise, but  also  what  that  might  mean for  the  future,  too, in  terms  of  things like  decriminalisation  of  abortion, which  we're  hopefully  moving  towards. So  I  think  all  of  those things  are  really  important, and  they're  like  a  thread  that runs  through  the  work  that  I  do.

C.L: COVID  19 told  us  a  lot about  how  people  negotiate interventions  in  society. It  told  us  that  actually people  may  not  listen  to health  messages  in  the  way that  they're  framed  and  that  we, as  researchers,  as  practitioners, as  policymakers,  might  have  to  listen more  to  people  who don't  want  to  listen  to  us, that  we  might  have  to  make  spaces  or  space  or whatever  configuration  to  be  able to  sit  and  listen  and  not  talk.

N.B: And  then  when  it  comes  to  also sharing  findings  with  other  people, I  think  it's  really important  that  we're  engaging in  multiple  and  different  ways  to communicate  what  this  might mean  and  also  to  always  be  in dialogue  so  that  we're getting  an  understanding  of whether  that  resonates  with  people. Does  this  make  sense  in the  context  of  their  lives  and  what  they  do? So  that's  for  me, some  of  the  really  important  things. 

Chase Ledin: Queering public health is core to the work that I do putting at the Centre and at the fore queer experiences in society. So thinking, of course, that public health is the dominant way of doing. It's guided by heterosexual people. It's guided by cisgender people. It's guided by able bodied people. What if other people were at the Centre of this conversation? If other people were at the Centre of doing service provision? What might it mean then to think about and through public health? That is mediated by other bodies, other ways of being in the world.  

Giulia De Togni: Technology such as exoskeleton that is meant to be used by someone who has impaired mobility or a disability or has to do rehabilitation after an injury. This technology is developed by often someone who has a strong, male, able body, and then no one else in the lab who has a different height or weight or gender would fit. Let alone the very person this technology supposedly created for. So this is one example of a bias that if we diversify the research group, and if we include stakeholders from the outside, we can help address.  

Karissa Patton: We have patient engagement groups, so we have people who have lived experience with pelvic health issues or pelvic pain that are part of our advisory, and they're helping us think about project priorities. They're helping us think about interpretation of sources.  

G.T: Another issue is ageism, lack of communication between technology developers and potential end users. So for example, care workers and care recipients. Often, there is in the robotics literature, this stereotypical image of the elderly, older people. Who are a homogeneous group. They all have frail bodies, and they all have impaired mobility and cognitive abilities. So this is the assumption, which means that they look at as a passive group instead of a active partner for robotic development. And this is a big problem that needs to change. If we don't include the voices of the very people who will know what they need, we will end up creating technologies that may not be safe, may not be useful. And one thing that I try to do through my research is to make sure that we do not have a top down approach. So we do not think of ourself as scientists as the only experts, but we also value the lived experiences and informal knowledges of potential end users.

Jenny Bos: The key thing about engagement is it's this two way process. So not only are we getting information and we're learning about people's experiences, but they gain from engaging with us. So it's really important that we have this mutually beneficial relationship and it's this two way process.  

C.L: So I continue to do that through community engagements and asking people to think about if they had the power to make changes in Scotland, what would they do?  

K.P: Who was part of those conversations that brought us here? Who maybe wasn't or who was left out or who wasn't even considered to be part of those conversations?

Joana Formosinho: So I see public engagement both as something that is a way of including local communities in disciplinary discussions, sharing our work with them, giving to the community. And I also see the processes of developing these experiences of public engagement as a mode of experimenting with interdisciplinary methods for research itself.

Nicola Boydell: I recently organised a workshop that sought to bring together different groups of people. So people who are involved in abortion care, people who are involved in the development of abortion policy in Scotland, people with experience of abortion and contraception and people who are engagement specialists. And so the focus of the workshop was really on thinking about practises of involvement and engagement in this particular landscape of abortion.  

J.B: So my role is to support engagement within the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, whether that be engagement that is inspiring about the research we do, whether we're debating complex issues, whether we're collaborating with communities or co-producing research. All these things encompass the Centre, and really engagement is at the heart of the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society.  

Rose Leahy: We're Baum & Leahy and we're currently Artistic Fellows here at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society at the University of Edinburgh we've been collaborating together for about 9 years and we collaborate with practitioners  and experts across various disciplines, from microbiology to ecology and more.

Joana Formisinho: Hello I'm Joanna for I'm an interdisciplinary research fellow here at CBSS, I was part of the Being Human festival and we were essentially telling stories of how human and particularly the human gut is formed at the intersection of human biologies and the activities of microbes.

Amanda Baum: As CBSS Arts Fellows we wish to exemplify and Inspire symbiotic working dynamics between arts and research and ultimately we wish to be part of establishing new forms of interdisciplinary working methods that reflect the complexity of our world.

Text: What do you want people to take from your work?

R.L: So what we'd like people to take away from our work I think is a curiosity and to feel inspired -  in our work we invite people into research and information through envisioning alternative realities and by getting people to imagine and discuss these we hope that they'll feel empowered to have a stake and a say in the research.

J.F: They're very interested in the ethical and social justice dimensions of their work and it is this interest in part that has brought them to CBSS but that is me putting words in their mouth.

Text: How would you describe your art to a child?

A.B: It's a great question, we are artists collaborating with others - from scientists studying microscopic life to chefs inventing new fermented foods to art historians reconstructing Renaissance goose and researchers trying to understand the human and society in new ways.

J.F: How I would describe them... dynamic creative lateral thinkers who have a profoundly um tactile sensorial immersive sensibility.

Text: Where do you get your inspiration?

R.L: so we get a lot of our inspiration from the strangeness of life the balance between something that feels intrinsically beautiful and something that feels kind of eerie and alien.

A.B: So we're really excited about CBSS as it's has this very holistic approach combining biomedical science with social science and looking at the inseparability and the constant exchange between these fields and we as artists are here to engage the public also in this in this field.

Himadri Madan: Hi, I am Himadri Madan, I'm a choreographer and a South Asian classical dancer. At Theiya ArtsI am the choreography co-lead.

Gaby Albornoz: Hi, I am Gaby Albornoz, I am a dancer and a choreographer with Theiya Arts.

Nandini Manjunath: Hi, I'm Nandini, I'm also one of the choreography co-leads at Theiya Arts, and I'm interested in arts-based research and choreographic work.

Ingrid Young: Hi I'm Ingrid Young, I'm a senior lecturer in CBSS. I suppose I'm a medical sociologist. I always feel funny about saying that I'm amedical sociologist,but I work in broadly sexual and reproductive health, and I am really interested in working with community partners in co-creating research.

So Maiden Mother Whore is a collaborative project between Theyia Arts and CBSS, primarily myself and Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra.It emerged through lots of discussion and interaction,but it really sought to explore the role of women, the social expectations, and the possibilities of resistance. And I think it's really important to push back and to create spaces and to create collaborations.

Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra: Hi, I'm Agomoni, I am a bioethicist, also at the University of Edinburgh, and I'm interested in questions of global health, justice, global health ethics, from our perspective, Ingrid and mine, so we are both part of the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society. And within that, one ofthe themes we look at is called beyond sex, so looking at a variety of questions around sex, gender, health, well being.

H.M: So Maiden Mother Whore is a collaboration between two organisations, one being Theiya Arts,and the other being Centre of Biomedicine Self and Societyfrom University of Edinburgh.And it kind of focuses on experiences of being in a female body as well as gender politics in general, it kind of offers a space to anyone from any gender for that matter, who has experienced the life of patriarchal structures, where you have been told by the society that thisis what you are, and this is what you're made for. And maybe not just to push those boundaries or resisted, but even like common solidarity and explore those feelings.

A.G: And so we came together to discuss and explore themes related to the gender, body,to identity in relation to expectations and oppression and violence imposed either by social norms and institutions, but also as by  the carceral state.

N.M: Yeah, I really struggle with that, and I've been struggling with the idea of arts-based research recently, particularly withthe burning world, particularly kind of thinking of the barriers to what happens with it. Um what happens with any research we do? What happens withany art we do? But yeah, I have to say I do struggle with what the role of art is in today's burning world. I don't think I have an answer to it.

G.A:There are communities and groups of people suffering incredible amounts of pain in different places of the world. And when you see that they still are able to be artistic and produce art in the most raw and basic forms, I feel that those communities haven't been erased because they are still able to do that.

I.Y:I think for me, the world has been burning for quite a long time. I mean, not for me, maybe personally, but for quite a lot of people. It's been burning for quite a long time. And I think the readings that we did as part of the reading group included stories. And I think Artas short stories,I think is really important because it allows us to imagine otherwise,how can we creatively come up with solutions to get out of the world that we're in and imagine a world that we want.

N.M:The fellowship has been about thinking about collaboration and thinking about - What is it that we're doing here? But also, what is theproductiveness of it? That's where the question came from of arts-based research in a burning world,because yes, that is a very provocativequestion to begin with.

But I think also getting into the nuances of that of what is arts based research,what is art led research and almost kind of disrupting ourselves to thinking, How did we do this? What can we create together? Bringing the two things together.So for me, that has taken almost the centre stage now.

I.Y:I think there could be a real challenge too, can you really achieve social justice when you're working in a university environment where you are in a uber privileged position? But I think in a way that's where working with community partners, with artistic partners, brings in that space for discussion and dialogue and see the possibilities of what there is.

N.M:We are at a point that we have so much experience that we want to filter through with both of you, with the other members of CBSS to actually watch our things again, and again, have those discussions.Yeah, I think it's a it's very good timeline of coming here for the fellowship.

Gaby: Did you...

Nandini: did I hear you  say something?

G:I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it's just nothing.

N:Do you want to talk about it?

Himadri: So I was saying umm...

G:Shhhh

G:Are you ok? Um, are you ok?

H: Can I talk to you? Can I say this?

N: Do you need to talk to somebody? Do you need somebody?

G: Breathing I just don't know what to do.

N: What are you doing?

G:I mean the other night, I wasn't sure I didn't know what to do and I didn't want to bother you, I'm so sorry,  I'm really sorry..

N: Are you both ok?

G: It's really nothing,  it's nothing to worry about, it's the issue thing. It'll be fine tomorrow... Seriously, it's just ...

N: Do you need to see  somebody about this?

H: Can someone listen to me? I'm trying but I can't find the words,

N: I can tell you, I hear you

H: It's hard

G: Sometimes I create this new space of my own I just think.

N: How can I help you? Tell me how I can help you.

H: I can't. You know that, that I just...

G: Why don't you tell somebody? H:I...

N:Do you need to talk about it?

G:Do you think she's fine?

N: I think she needs to talk about it.

G: I'm sure it will be fine.

N: I think she needs to talk about it.

H: It's so hard sometimes, I...

N: You know what's going to help? Talking about it.

G: I really don't think we should talk any more about this. Just let it be for a time.

N: It's healthy to talk about things

G: but sometimes I just want to think,  and my thoughts... I can't even hear myself. thinking and speaking and...

N: If we don't talk about it,  who's going to hear us?

G: No, it's really fine. Are you ok to go?

N:I think we need to talk about it.

G:I think we should go for  a coffee and just chill...

N: No I think we need to talk about it.

H: I have to tell you something. Last night, I was  there and...sorry

N: Yes, talk about it. It's going to help you to talk about it.

G: I could hear it, but I didn't do anything. I didn't know what to do - should I call  somebody, should I check, should I ask? Are they ok? I was not sure.

H: Last time I was... I heard, (others talk over) there were words,  there was speaking. there was sound and there was voices. And I can't do the  words, I can't can't (all talking over each other) It's just like... there were words,  there was speaking, there was happening I don't know (all arguing)

N: We need to listen to her.

G; Is there anything that we can do that we're not doing

N: We need to help her talk about it.

G: Sometimes I don't think people need  to be told what to do or what to say.

N: What do you need?

H: So last night there was something happening, there was something

N: What do you need?  Is this what she needs?

N: there was something.  I was just trying to hear... People just stop! Just listen.

(transcript auto-generated)

My  name's  Nicola  Boydell  and  in  July  2024, I  hosted  a  creative  workshop, engagement  and  involvement  practises  and abortion  care, collectively  envisioning  futures. The  workshop  was  supported  by the  University  of  Edinburgh  Centre  for Biomedicine  Self  and  Society  and facilitated  in  partnership  with  and then  a  Glasgow  based futures  oriented  design  agency. This  workshop  formed  part  of my  research  fellowship  with the  Healthcare  Improvement  Studies  Institute. The  workshop  focused  on developing  a  shared  understanding  of current  involvement  and engagement  practises  in  abortion  care, sometimes  described  using  terms  like community  engagement  and  patient and  public  involvement  and  engagement. The  event  brought  together  people  from across  the  abortion  landscape, including  activists,  community  organisations, academics,  policymakers, and  health  professionals  to  collectively envision  futures  for  meaningful  involvement in  research,  practise,  and  policy. Using  generative  creative  methods, we  reflected  on  our  own  experiences, mapped  involvement  and  engagement across  the  abortion  care  landscape, and  built  ambitious  Utopian  visions  for the  future  of  involvement  and engagement  across  this  landscape. We  also  identified practical  shorter  term  steps to  help  us  move  towards  our  Utopian  visions. Together,  we  developed  a  map of  the  abortion  care  landscape, giving  us  a  starting  point  to better  understand  the  relationships between  different  types  of service  users  and  key  stakeholders  that influence  their  experiences  directly or  indirectly  from  medical, socio  cultural,  and  legal  political  contexts. This  process  also  gave  us space  to  reflect  on  what  it  is  about this  landscape  that  makes involvement  and  engagement  here  unique. The  workshop  generated a  rich  set  of  future  visions, helped  us  align  around shared  goals  and  deepened our  understanding  of  some  of the  barriers  to  involvement  and  engagement. This  work  is  just  the  beginning. We  are  committed  to  rethinking involvement  and  engagement practises  and  abortion. As  next  steps,  we  want  to support  ongoing  engagement  and  collaboration, stimulate  further  debate,  dialogue, and  advocacy,  as  well as  conducting  further  research. By  building  on  the  discussions and  visions  from  this  workshop, we  aim  to  drive  meaningful  change  in involvement  and  engagement practises  and  abortion  care, supporting  progress in  both  research  and  practise.