Lead: Professor Elena Vacchelli (Lead of Collaborative Project)
Duration: 1 March 2024 - 31 August 2025
Funder: AHRC
Total Value: £43,749
Project Overview
In the wake of the so-called ‘menopausal turn’ (Jermyn 2020) which sees public figures and mainstream media now openly discuss menopause - the highly stigmatised, misunderstood transition to cessation of menstruation - this network aims to establish a transdisciplinary, international, cross-cultural collaboration bringing together academics, artists, stakeholders and health professionals to contribute an arts activism and social science perspective to the discourse in this changing landscape. MAUSI Net aims to establish a national advocacy network which is informed by international experiences in UK, Sweden (Malmo) and India (Delhi). Through the use of co-creative epistemologies to stimulate dialogue, knowledge production and dissemination of cross-cultural experiences of women’s post-reproductive age, MAUSI Net will use a multi-pronged approach capitalising on the strengths of the three contexts though a series of three international workshops.
Objectives include:
- Advance transdisciplinary understanding and awareness of post-reproductive health through ongoing collaboration in cross-cultural contexts (UK, Sweden, India
- Stimulate knowledge production through international involvement of researchers, stakeholders and wider public in different socio-economic contexts re. understanding of menopause
- Build a nation-wide advocacy network to include academics in the arts and humanities, social scientists, NGO practitioners, foundations, policy stakeholders, corporate EDI representatives
- Promote a step-change debate across national boundaries by bringing together different stakeholders and international organisations such as UN Women and World Health Organisation in the three sites (Sweden, India and UK)
- Shift the discourse away from biomedical discourses towards a broader social science and humanities-based understanding
- Contest negative discourses around the menopause through artivism and public engagement
- Decolonise understandings of the menopause by including perspectives of Dalit women who are lower caste/working class and highly discriminated against in India
- Create a sustainable transdisciplinary and cross-cultural network fostering post-reproductive age awareness beyond the duration of the project
