I came to philosophy in the hope of finding a better way to understand how and why unwanted touch occurs during childbirth, even within positive relationships of care, and how to prevent it from happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I stayed because I became increasingly interested in how language and ethics interact. In particular, I am interested in phenomena of silencing and how we are – and are not – able to do things with our words in potentially subordinating contexts. I am particularly interested in contexts – such as healthcare – where there is a mismatch between what institutions and the law claim we should<\/em> be able to do with our words, and with what people describe in practice. As such, I am particularly interested in philosophical work which is informed by and develops from empirical data on people’s experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alongside my PhD, I have worked on interdisciplinary research on maternity mentoring and on midwives’ perspectives on policy proposals to monitor pregnant people’s alcohol intakes. The latter project was published here<\/a>. It demonstrates the need for policy development to be informed by the perspectives of those who will be implementing the policy, and the risks of ambiguity in how concepts and terminology are understood and used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have also contributed to resources on rights-respecting maternity care<\/a> for autistic people and for the clinicians providing their maternity care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Previous to my PhD, I had a successful career in public policy. This included representing the UK in EU discussions, developing and implementing new policies across business, the environment and agriculture, and taking the Marine and Coastal Access Bill through Parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I moved from the civil service to lead research and associated policy for the UK human rights charity Birthrights<\/a>. There, I heard many experiences of unwanted intimate touch during maternity care, despite a legal context which requires positive consent for touch to be permissible. These experiences led directly to my doctoral work, which I hope will provide tools to both prevent such experiences and to provide meaningful redress when they occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My analysis of these experiences are included in the book Women’s Birthing Bodies and the Law<\/a><\/em>, published in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Birthrights, I also led on work on maternity experiences of people facing multiple disadvantage during their pregnancy, in collaboration with the charity Birth Companions<\/a>. I worked on consent and mental capacity during childbirth (you can see some of my commentaries via Promoting Open Justice in the Court of Protection<\/a>), and led on development of inclusive and accessible factsheets on human rights for birthing people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During this period, I was Vice-Chair of the Maternity Voices Partnership of my local hospital Trust, co-creating service improvement with staff and those with lived experience. I worked as a lay examiner for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. I was also a member of the Independent Monitoring Board of HMP Downview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside work, I enjoy watching and training in ballet, and am preparing to take a vocational graded qualification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I came to philosophy in the hope of finding a better way to understand how and why unwanted touch occurs during childbirth, even within positive relationships of care, and how to prevent it from happening. I stayed because I became increasingly interested in how language and ethics interact. In particular, I am interested in phenomena […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-23","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rebecca.brione.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rebecca.brione.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rebecca.brione.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rebecca.brione.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rebecca.brione.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/rebecca.brione.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97,"href":"https:\/\/rebecca.brione.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rebecca.brione.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}