Romy is a PhD candidate in the School of Social Science. She completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours Class I in Sociology. Romy’s research investigates women’s experiences of obstetric violence and birth trauma within Australian maternity care. Obstetric violence is an underexplored and undertheorized concept that has emerged from Latin American feminist activism and aims to address the ways in which gender-based violence manifest in maternity care. Obstetric violence is most often indirectly explored through studies of birth trauma. Existing research on birth trauma operates under a biomedical lens, understood as the result of individual psychological vulnerabilities. Her research challenges this perspective and the narrative/s it produces by shifting focus to the structures that shape maternity care experiences – including health systems, clinical governance, organisational culture and the influence of gender, ethnicity, and class – and makes visible the existence of obstetric violence in Australia.
Awards
- John Western Sociology Prize (2021)
Research Interests
- Sexual and reproductive health
- Sociology of sex, gender, and sexuality
- Sociology of health, illness, and disability
- Feminist theory & philosophy