Category: Research

Ruth De Souza on Wearable Technology

I am speaking at the WT | Wearable Technologies conference in Sydney next month. I spoke to Wearable Technologies Australia (WTA) about the future of the wearable tech industry and some of the challenges the industry is facing. Check out the  full program here. Here’s a link to the interview we did and I’ve also […]

Women’s health across cultures

Social and economic disadvantage are important contributors to poor maternal and perinatal outcomes in high-income countries such as Australia. For example Australian research shows women from refugee backgrounds have higher rates of stillbirth, fetal death in utero and perinatal mortality compared with Australian born women. However, the recent publication of findings from a retrospective (looking back) population […]

The impact of walk-in centres and GP co-operatives on emergency department presentations

It’s always such a buzz to get published, especially when it’s work done with a former student. You can read the article here: Crawford, J., Cooper, S., Cant, R., & DeSouza, R. (2017). The impact of walk-in centres and GP co-operatives on emergency department presentations: A systematic review of the literature. International Emergency Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ienj.2017.04.002. Highlights […]

What can The Handmaid’s Tale teach us about intersectionality in institutional life?

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale focuses on women living in a theocratic totalitarian regime in a newly created dystopian, pronatalist society called Gilead. The regime attributes declining fertility to women’s rights, same sex relationships and an environment damaged beyond repair, which it solves with  the creation of a society predicated on women stratified into their […]

Wearable devices and the potential for community health improvement

Written for and first published in in the August 2016 edition of Nurse Click  (the Australian College of Nursing’s monthly electronic, interactive PDF publication available to ACN members, and to stakeholders, the wider nursing and non-nursing community who subscribe to it.). Cite as: DeSouza, R. (2016). Wearable devices and the potential for community health improvement. Nurse […]

“I had to keep my options open”: White mothers and neoliberal maternity

Unpublished manuscript that never found an appropriate institutional home, but sharing for those who might be interested. Cite as: DeSouza, R., & Butt, D. (2016, June 11). “I had to keep my options open”: White mothers and neoliberal maternity. [Web log post]. Retrieved from: http://ruthdesouza.dreamhosters.com/2016/06/11/i-had-to-keep-my-options-open-white-mothers-and-neoliberal-maternity/ Where patriarchal healthcare institutions saw birth as a process controlled by male doctors […]

Knowledge and action, developing evidence for an equity agenda

Speech given at the launch of a partnership between Monash University and Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and Health (CEH) April 29th 2015 and the celebration of CEH’s 21st birthday. I would like to show my respect and acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land on which this launch takes place, the Wurundjeri-willam people of the Kulin […]

Korean migrant mothers on giving birth in Aotearoa New Zealand

Cite as: DeSouza, Ruth. (2014). One woman’s empowerment is another’s oppression: Korean migrant mothers on giving birth in Aotearoa New Zealand. Journal of Transcultural Nursing. doi: 10.1177/1043659614523472.  Download pdf (262KB) DeSouza J Transcult Nurs-2014. Published online before print on February 28, 2014. Abstract Purpose: To critically analyze the power relations underpinning New Zealand maternity, through analysis of discourses […]