While the negative impact of child‐raising and caring on women's career progression in academia is well‐established, less is known about the role of academic women's lived experiences of maternity leave as an institutional practice. This article presents the findings of a qualitative study of the lived experiences of female academics and researchers in an Irish university. The analysis intrinsically links organizational structures and problems with the lived and felt dimensions of work. The findings point to the need for better structural accommodations for maternity leave which address the relationship between caring and career disadvantage within academia. The article adds to existing literature on the intersection of motherhood and academia by unpicking the specific role of maternity leave as both a lived experience and an institutional practice that can reinforce gender inequalities in academia.
This paper connects relational theorising within geographies of disability and geographies of fear of violent crime (FOVC) to explore how disabled people navigate fear and experience of hostility in their everyday lives in Ireland. Drawing on a two year qualitative study with people with a range of impairments, we explore the human and non-human components of assemblages -in particular, encounters with others, assistive supports and 'objects' of disability, and the physical environment -that give rise to diverse affectual and sensory geographies of un/safety. Disabled people have multiple understandings of un/safety that are contingent, embodied and CONTACT Claire Edwards
This paper offers a critical reflection on the use of walking and mobile interviews in the context of research with disabled people whose diverse corporealities and cognitions challenge assumptions about walking as a normative bodily act associated with free, autonomous, mobility. While it has been suggested that mobile methods hold out the potential to open up dialogic and participative spaces of inquiry that capture embodied, affectual, and sensory knowledges in place, there has been less discussion of how social and bodily difference shapes the politics and practices of methods on the move. Drawing on research exploring disabled people's socio-spatial knowledges and experiences of urban un/safety in Ireland, we address this lacuna by reflecting on our use of ‘go-along’ interviews with people with diverse impairments and mobilities. Recognising the barriers that mediate disabled people's use of urban space, we interrogate both what go-along interviews can contribute to our understanding of disabled people's embodied encounters with urban un/safety, but also the limits, challenges and politics of mobile interviews as a form of methodological practice. We suggest there is a need to advance interdisciplinary social science scholarship which troubles ambulant research, and writes social and bodily difference into mobility studies and mobile methods.
There are numerous barriers to third level education, all of which are well documented. While several initiatives are taking place locally indicating a range of responses from community education to further education to third level, a number of gaps remain which continue to contribute to educational inequality in Ireland. A number of issues warrant attention; the need to move beyond a ‘deficit model of disadvantage’; to address educational inequality in a framework that challenges the language of disadvantage; the need to recognise the complexities and range of supports required to tackle educational inequality; and the need for more collaborative and interactive consultation processes in representing communities that are persistently marginalised. The aim of this article is to address a number of the above issues and to document some emergent themes from research currently being undertaken within Cork city. The research is being conducted through the Strategic Innovation Fund ‘Connections Project’ at UCC with a focus on adult non-traditional learners. It is one of four strands of the project. The research findings to date reflect the view of recent literature pointing to the need to open up the debate on the value of community education.
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