PLEASE NOTE THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS AND WILL BE RE-SCHEDULED AT A LATER DATE
Co-hosted by the ANU School of Sociology and the ANU Gender Institute
A cancer diagnosis can affect all areas of identity, including physical, temporal, psychosocial, sexual and relational. Renegotiating one’s sense of self in the face of a cancer diagnosis requires navigating biomedical power structures, gender and corporeal norms, and working with and within hegemonic cancer culture. Although the number of people surviving cancer is increasing, the lived experience of survivorship is complex, especially regarding subjectivity and sexuality.
Carmel’s research investigates the ways in which people renegotiate their embodied sense of self following a cancer diagnosis, using arts-based methods underpinned by a feminist ethics of collective care. Through a series of creative workshops, co-facilitated by an artist and a somatic sexologist, participants created life-sized ‘body collage’ artworks depicting their relationship with their body, sexuality, and cancer, which then informed individual and group research conversations.
Employing collage as a hermeneutic, Carmel will discuss subjectivity, temporality and relationality in cancer survivorship, the epistemological implications of arts-based research methods, and the complexities of her positionality as a lived experience researcher. Her research also has useful insights for developing person-centred survivorship pathways of care, and for practitioners of creative health research.
Carmel Cardona is a feminist interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner working at the intersection of arts and health. Her doctoral research is funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, and she works in the Dept of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. She has a background in the UK and Australian cultural sectors and founded a cultural enterprise delivering strategic support to artists and creative organisations. This enriches her creative methodology as she investigates sexuality and selfhood in cancer survivorship.
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