Professor Doreen Balabanoff will be presenting papers at three upcoming conferences
1) The first is next week, April 12-14 at York University is entitled: Maternal Wellbeing and Health: Emotional, Physical, Psychological, Social, Spiritual, Cultural, and Environmental
Doreen's paper is entitled: “Embodied Experience and Birth Environment Design”
She is one of over 100 presenters from 11 countries..."providing a broad and deep perspective on maternal health theories and issues across global configurations".
http://motherhoodinitiative.org
From the conference organizer: Bringing together scholars and practitioners who research maternal health and wellbeing...the conference locates maternal health in a cross-disciplinary and cross-geographical context...examining the ethical, political, sociocultural, economic, historical, racial, spiritual, physical, psychological, and environmental dimensions of maternal health...including...the ways in which culturally dominant ideologies about motherhood and health are taught or challenged; ways in which various paradigms of maternal thinking, being, and acting are constructed, negotiated, embedded, enacted, or resisted in specific health and social situations; ways the medical system can empower or disempower mothers...maternal ways of engaging in activism and advocacy work on maternal health from cross-cultural perspectives and on behalf of marginalized and oppressed mothers, childless women, and children.
APRIL 12-14, 2019, York University, McLaughlin College, Toronto
hosted by the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI)
led by Dr. Andrea O'Reilly, Professor School of Women's Studies,
Founder-Director: (MIRCI); Journal of the Motherhood Initiative; Demeter Press;
Editor, Encyclopedia of Motherhood, Sage Press, 2010.
2) The second conference is the ACSF 11th annual Symposium on Spirituality and Architecture. It will be held at Taliesin West, May 16-19, 2019, organized by the Architecture, Culture and Spirituality Forum.
Doreen's paper is entitled "Towards a New Architecture for Birth: light and embodied experience in the reimagined birth environment"
Established in 2007, the Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum <www.acsforum.org> provides an international forum for scholarship, education, practice, and advocacy regarding the cultural and spiritual significance of the built environment. ACSF believes that the design and experience of the built environment can assist the spiritual development of humanity in service of addressing the world’s most pressing issues.
ACSF 11 is structured around the main topic "Continuity in/of Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality". Three keynote speakers will be renowned architect Will Bruder, Frank Lloyd Wright scholar Michael Desmond, and internationally recognized Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, the recipient of the 2019 ACSF Award for Outstanding Achievement.
3) The third will be the 14th International Normal Labour and Birth Research Conference <https://www.uclan.ac.uk/venue-hire/normal-labour-and-birth.php> June 17th -19th, U of Central Lancashire, at Grange-Over Sands, UK.
Doreen is co-organizer mini-symposium on the topic of birth environment design, with colleagues from the US and Italy, including four papers and a discussion period. This is part of the Global Birth Environment Design Network that I co-founded last year.
Her paper is entitled: "Considering Venustas as a Key to Birth Environment Design"
From the organizers: The conference includes "academics, researchers, policy makers, clinical staff, service users, parents, and birth activists from around the world...Previous events have attracted a wide range of international delegates, from architects to economists, neuroscientists to sociologists, and from those working in maternity care (midwives, doctors, doulas, paediatricians) to those who have experienced it".