Summit

Title: To move forward we need to look back: surfacing the 'legacy' of the colonial and past patriarchal past in modern day STEMM

Lead Proposer: Dr Patricia Xavier

Co Proposer/s: 

• Nathalie Al Kakoun (Engineering)
• Fred Boy (Business)
• Ana Da Silva (Medicine)
• Alys Einon Waller (Midwifery)
• Catherine Groves (Business)

Project aim: Though Wales is a small nation, it was at the centre of the successive industrial and computational revolutions that have shaped society. Could MASI now position itself to be at the centre of a revolution in critical consciousness in STEMM, leading to more equitable and inclusive practice?

MASI explicitly seeks out ways to make the world more sustainable. Through interdisciplinary data collection and co-creation activities, our proposal aims to surface the legacy of the colonial and patriarchal past within modern STEMM education. Our proposal combines insights from Midwifery, Business, Engineering and Medicine, sectors with different cultures and drivers, but shared unjust legacies.

STEMM curricula have been shaped by the needs of society, but those needs have been interpreted by those in positions of power in ways that optimize their economic outcomes at the cost of both society and the environment. These have predominantly been people who are Western, male, traditionally educated and wealthy. We see this in e.g. the damage done by the continued over-medicalisation of women in childbirth, and the lack of ability that engineers have to engage meaningfully in understanding the social consequences of their decisions (Grenfell, BMW emissions, and, the sector’s failure to move on from a business model that has driven climate crisis). We argue that the structures that have been put in place by generations of thought leaders are now inadequate as a foundation for the needs of modern, inclusive society. No amount of patching (e.g. bolt-on ethics courses) will make them fit-forpurpose.

We propose taking the time to look critically at the evolution of STEMM fields through collaborative research and co-production, and looking for evidence of how legacies within our education system are impacting on modern values. Longer-term, this awareness of where our traditions and habits come from should enable us to identify a more just and fit-for-purpose-for-everyone structure.

Title: Resilience, challenge and change: Learning from nurses' lived experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales and beyond

Lead Proposer: Dr Dean Whybrow

Co Proposer/s: 

• Professor David Turner, College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University
• Dr Michael Bresalier, College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University
• Dr Sarah Crook, College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University
• Dr Laura Kalas, College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University
• Dr Ian Beech, College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University
• Hywel Thomas, College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University
• Trudi Petersen, College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University
• Stephen Mckenna-Lawson, College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University

Project aim: This project will disrupt the recent 'hero narrative' of nurses’ work, uncovering their authentic experience through first-hand testimonies. The project will establish a new interprofessional nexus between individuals in clinical practice, nursing research/education and historical and literary research/education, disrupting the separation of art and science; this could create a precedent for future ambitious and adventurous work. The collaboration will contextualise and memorialise contemporary nursing in a pandemic, first, with the aid of accounts of past caregiving in previous pandemics, and second, with the accumulation of current lived experiences expressed as creative writing that disrupt the monolithic narrative of nursing as the romanticised legacy of Florence Nightingale.

To provide the project with significant prestige, high profile figures from the literary and nursing worlds will be invited to contribute (e.g. the poet Owen Sheers; the Chief Nursing Officer for Wales Sue Tranka etc). This is an innovative approach for a post-pandemic world where we will explore how we can learn from nurses' experiences of Covid to foster a more connected, secure future. Understanding the current, lived experience through the lens of history, and facilitating a creative space for the production of nurses’ Creative Writing, will have an empowering, evocative and lasting impact.

Title: MASI - Mumbai Lablet

Lead Proposer: Dr Thomas Reitmaier

Co Proposer/s: 

• Dr Awawing Anjwengwo Andongma (Medicine, Swansea University)
• Dr Erin P Dooley (Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University of Bristol)

Project aim: The physicist Niels Bohr famously remarked that the opposite of a great truth is another truth. The great truth of the coronavirus pandemic is that it has affected all of us. But the opposite of this great truth is tragically also true: the pandemic is not an equalizer, for marginalized communities have not only been affected differently, but disproportionately. On a smaller scale this great truth plays out within our university, where to some extent we've been able to shift many teaching and research activities online using platforms like Zoom, Google Docs, and Office 365. However, the outreach and transformative research activities involving fieldwork in and co-creation with marginalized communities have been affected disproportionately.

Listening, engaging, and involving marginalized communities more than ever before is paramount. And with this research expedition our ambition then is to tackle this great truth by innovating ways of cocreating with marginalized communities in a world that has been profoundly shaped by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

We will do this by establishing a MASI lablet situated in Mumbai, India and run by Dani Raju at Studio Hasi. Following MASI's mantra that people are the most disruptive technology of all, we are delighted that with Dani we have identified a proven and eager collaborator. Dani's has a rare combination of codesign, prototyping, and media production skills, which can be seen in the following video and is a sneak peak of the diverse and far reaching contributions that will come from this expedition. Finally, Dani has strong links with community members in Dharavi – Asia’s largest slum, situated in the heart of Mumbai, India and smaller, rural communities surrounding Mumbai.