Tag Archives: social sciences

(Re)thinking with care: ethics, aesthetics, practice workshop.

Dr. Olivia Sheringham from Birkbeck’s School of Social Sciences, and PhD researcher Rebekka Hölzle reflect on a creative workshop at Birkbeck exploring care as concept, method, and practice in the context of migration and solidarity.

(Why) should we be thinking about care in the contemporary moment?
What is care, what are its limits?
What are the relationships between care and creativity; between care and power?

Living in times of a grave neglect and denial of care for many communities and spaces across the world, it might not be surprising that ‘care’ has become an often-discussed buzzword within academia and beyond. Care seems to be everywhere, but where does it begin and end? And does this omnipresence mean it is no longer a useful concept? Should we still be thinking about care – and if so, why?

These are some of the many questions that we explored over the course of a half-day creative workshop at Birkbeck University. Our incentive to co-host the workshop was to share with others some of the insights and dilemmas we’ve experienced in our own research engagements with care in the context of the UK’s hostile environment. Rebekka’s PhD examines the every-day survival and resistance practices of migrant women with ‘no recourse to public funds’ in London, whilst Olivia’s British Academy/Wolfson funded fellowship project explores networks of care and solidarity with refugees and people seeking asylum in London. In different ways, we’ve been grappling with the possibilities and limitations of care as a framework for engaging with – and enhancing understandings of – marginalised migrants’ everyday practices of survival and resistance.

Through the workshop, we wanted to open up a space of exchange and dialogue with other researchers and practitioners, to creatively, critically and care-fully explore ‘care’ as theme, method and ethics. The participants included PhD students, creative practitioners and researchers from other London universities. Inspired by Rebekka and Clau di Gianfrancesco’s ‘collaborative knowledge production’ workshops, we aimed to hold a creative and caring space with a flexible structure, offering shared materials, questions, and prompts, to think with care together. As we’ve experienced through our own research, care can mean many different things to different people, care is contextual and contingent, care can relate to practice, labour, ethics, affects, and relations. Having both spent a lot of time in recent months reading academic literature around care, we wanted to explore how we could bring some of this work into the space of the workshop without producing a sense of hierarchy between this published knowledge and the embodied, spontaneous, emergent knowledge produced during the workshop and that participants brought into the space.

In both of our research projects, we have been experimenting with creative and participatory approaches, moving away from top-down defined ‘research outputs’ and instead remain open to a collaborative creative process. Throughout the workshop we took a similar stance, starting with games and creative activities that drew on techniques from the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ to initiate processes of embodied learning and dialogue. This included creating a collective care statue, for which, without thinking too much, participants were invited to hold a pose they associated with care – an activity that Olivia had previously done in different workshops and research contexts. Without words, these gestures already revealed the multiple meanings of care: as personal and collective, as protection and connection, as rest and repair, as involving human and more-than-human. We also played the Theatre of the Oppressed game, Colombian Hypnosis, where people workin pairs and take it in turns to lead the other person around the space using their hand as a guide. This game invited a discussion around the relationship – and fine line – between care and power, and some reflections on the ‘burden’ of responsibility for those taking the lead, those ‘taking care’, and a potential sense of relief to be led. 

We then spent some time sharing our research – drawing attention to our understandings of care as both object of study and method. Olivia talked about some of the ambiguities around the notion of ‘radical care’, and the trouble we both found with seeming oppositions in the literature between, for example, institutional versus radical care, charity versus solidarity, or a tendency to romanticise care as survival. Rebekka reflected on engaging care as method, and our shared commitment to ‘care-full’ methodologies as radical ethical practice. In the context of the absence of care within a racist, violent migration and border regime, care can become a fundamental mode through which to resist the hostile environments produced by the British state. We also reflected on the challenges and limitations of this commitment to care-full methodologies, and the risk of reproducing the same power imbalances that the research is seeking to disrupt.

Our conversation prompted a collective reflection on the indefinability of care, of care as necessarily involving reflection and negotiation. In the next activity, we sought to visualise this through a collective collage in which all participants had time to engage with quotations and words on the wall through writing, drawing, and using tape to create connections between what was already there, as well as each other’s additions. This collective crafting enabled us to exchange and connect knowledges, ideas, and questions around care, while staying with its messiness.

We ended the workshop with a set of individual and collective poetry writing activities, reflecting on what ‘care is not’– what needs to be refused for care to flourish and second, sensory poems imagining what a ‘pocket of care’ would look/smell/feel/sound like. In a similar way to using our bodies to engage and produce new knowledges during the theatre and crafting activities, these exercises opened our imaginations to expand the lexical boundaries of care, and its absence.

In the words of one participant’s poem: ‘Care is labour, is slow it is messy and, in its complexity, it strives to oppose commonsensical definitions of it. But this does not mean that care is understood with jargon-full academic ruminations.’ We hope that the workshop created a space to think with care beyond academic jargon, to embody care and to practice collective care within the space. To stay with the trouble and the messiness of care, to recognise its limits and contradictions – but also to imagine the care that could be, the ‘might be’ and the ‘not yet’.

“Care is movement – where is it going?

Sometimes it’s going nowhere

Sometimes it is returning”

All photos credited to Rebekka Mirjam Hölzle 

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The future is here – exploring the role of AI in the world of homecare

Dr Kerry Harman from Birkbeck’s School of Social Sciences and Ms Caroline Firmin and Ms Dominique Davies use this blog to reflect on a recent exhibition they attended entitled ‘AI: Who’s looking after me?

I’m a senior lecturer at Birkbeck with a particular interest in invisible labour and marginalised knowledges. My interest in this area has led me to collaborating with Ms. Caroline Firmin from Birkbeck, Ms. Dominique Davies from Birkbeck and researchers at the University of Manchester on a case study entitled ‘Reimagining Homecare’ which explores sensory ways of knowing care. Caroline and Dominique are both homecare worker-researchers, and the ‘Reimagining Homecare’ project is part of a larger three-year AHRC funded Care Aesthetics Research Exploration (CARE) project.  

In August, Dominique, Caroline and I attended an exhibition entitled AI: Who’s looking after me? We all found the exhibition extremely thought provoking, so much so that we all kept thinking about it for days after we’d visited. As Caroline rode home on the bus (it was a long trip) she pondered the question: ‘can AI play a part in homecare’? It wasn’t the first time she’d thought about AI and homecare as it has been a focus of discussion within the field of homecare. What follows is a combined critical and poetic response from the three of us: 

‘AI: who’s looking after me?’ – well one response to that question would be the 1.62 million people working in Adult Social Care in England (skillsforcare). Of this very significant number of workers, 82% are female, the average age is 45, 23% have black, Asian and minority ethnicity and 16% have a non-British nationality. Almost a quarter of the adult social care workforce are employed on zero-hours contracts. Did we hear from or see any of these workers in the exhibition? No, but their silence was deafening and reverberated in the photographs of interiors of outsourced AI worker’s homes in the Global South in ‘The future is here’. 

The future is here 

I’m an elderly person of a great age past my eighties and keeping the rest a secret. 

I’m bedridden I need help from carers to help me get washed dressed change my pad . 

Hoist me from bed to armchair. Give me my medication. Make my meals and drinks . 

Do my laundry and housework.  

My family do my shopping and see to bills . I do need quite a bit of support.  

Can AI give me that kind of support? Can AI greet me in the morning with a smile on its face ? Can it respond to my needs, does it know how I’m feeling?  

Will AI talk to me and tell me what is happening outside where I live? For example, what is the weather like outside today? Is there anything new going on? Did you see any neighbours?  

Does AI know when I need a doctor.  

Does it know my thoughts and feelings? How do you have a relationship with AI like I do with my carers and family? 

Can it sense moods? Can it sense changes?  

We rely on technology everyday, sometimes it’s frustrating. Mostly we adapt to technology, because we don’t have a choice.  

Can we do without technology?  We use our phones, laptops, bank cards on a daily basis but when these go wrong what happens?  

What if AI goes wrong? Who cares for me now?  

Does AI have a place or contribute to homecare? 

What is AI? what does it do?  

Many of us have heard of AI but I don’t think we fully understand what it means. How is AI made and who programmes them? What role do they play in our lives?  

Can they play a role in our lives better or worse than humans? 

Can AI be corrupted, can it be trustworthy? Would the person receiving care be comfortable with AI?   

Can AI help the blind, deaf, disabled, wheelchair users, mental health, dementia/ Alzheimer’s? How would the elderly understand communicating with AI? 

Is AI here to stay forever and replace human feelings, touches, senses?  

I think humans need human touches and human responses. I think it makes them feel more connected…. 

The future is here 

For me, ‘Who’s looking after me?’ spotlights the question of ‘what does it mean to be human’? Visiting the exhibition prompted me to read ‘The Inconvenience of Other People’ by Lauren Berlant. Berlant provides a detailed exploration of the impossibility of sovereignty and argues that politically we need to learn to work with the ambiguity that the fantasy of sovereignty creates. I contend that in many ways AI could be thought of as a human response to the human desire for sovereignty. In other words, because people are ‘inconvenient’ we seek to create a world where we can bypass them. Enter AI. However, as Caroline and Dominique both ask, can AI replace ‘care’? And even if it could, this raises a bigger question: if we humans are going to go to the trouble of teaching machines ‘to care’, why not invest in teaching humans to care more for each other and the world? Why do we want machines to do that? As Berlant maintains, people (and things) ARE inconvenient, but we need to move beyond the fantasy of sovereignty as we continue to bump into each other in this world. Creating machines that can ‘care’ will not address the fantasy of human sovereignty, it will only mean that we need to develop new ways of relating to things. While the possibilities generated by new types of relations and relating should not be foreclosed, the fantasy that this will lead to greater sovereignty needs to be abandoned. In other words, we need to learn better ways of getting along together.  

The future is here 

I feel like a robot – robotic, when I’m performing care.  

Perhaps the future is here?  

…so lots of questions as we continue in exploring care aesthetics and sensory ways of knowing care.  

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Meet the international student: Saheed Ajibola, from Nigeria 

Recipient of the International Excellence Scholarship, Saheed Ajibola came to Birkbeck to study MSc Geographic Data Science. Here he shares more about his background and experience.

Saheed Ajibola

Embracing Birkbeck’s unique flexibility 

One of the standout features of Birkbeck, University of London, is its flexibility. This institution offers evening and part-time courses, making it a perfect fit for students like me who want to strike a balance between studies and other commitments. It’s been a game-changer, allowing me to pursue higher education without completely disrupting my existing routines. 

Life in the heart of London 

Birkbeck’s location in London is a dream come true for many, including me. London is a diverse and vibrant city with a rich cultural scene, historical landmarks, and a global atmosphere. What makes it even more special is the multicultural aspect, fantastic networking opportunities, and the presence of esteemed educational institutions like Birkbeck. As a student, I’ve loved being able to immerse myself in London’s unique blend of academic excellence and cultural exploration.  

Tips for international students 

Adjusting to life in the UK can be both challenging and rewarding! Here are some tips to make the most of your time at Birkbeck and in the UK: 

  1. Familiarize yourself with the campus and resources: take the time to explore the university building and get to know the available resources, including libraries, study spaces, and student support services. This will help you feel more at home and better prepared for your studies.
  2. Build relationships: connect with your tutors, classmates, and fellow students. Networking can be incredibly valuable for your academic and future career endeavors. Attend seminars, workshops, and conferences related to your field of study as much as you can.
  3. Explore the city: London is a treasure trove of experiences waiting to be discovered. From museums and parks to historical sites and cultural events, there’s something for everyone. Trust me; you’re in for a great treat.
  4. Seek help when needed: don’t hesitate to seek assistance if you face academic, personal, or health-related challenges. Birkbeck offers so many student support services, including counselling and academic advising, to assist students in various aspects of their lives.

Academic challenges and preparation 

While your academic journey at Birkbeck can be immensely rewarding, some courses may be academically demanding. Expect coursework that challenges you to think critically, engage with complex concepts, and demonstrate a deep understanding of the subject matter. To thrive, develop effective study habits, master time management skills, and refine your note-taking techniques. Remember, your tutors are there to guide you, and Birkbeck has numerous academic resources like sessions to improve study skills and essay writing. 

My favourite London gem: St. Pancras International 

Amidst the hustle and bustle of London, one place that truly captivates me is St. Pancras International. Its historical significance and architectural excellence make it a remarkable destination. This iconic location houses international, underground, and overground rail services, making it a hub of connectivity and as well as an architectural masterpiece. 

Future endeavors and aspirations 

While I haven’t worked in a field directly related to my course yet, I’m actively applying for jobs. I have my eyes set on the Graduate GIS Analyst Role at Stantec, where I hope to work after completing my course. The journey continues, and I’m excited to see where the future takes me! 

Further information