Research

Research clusters

Mothers & Work

  • Sarah Arnold
  • Anne O’Brien
  • Marian Crowley-Henry 
  • Eglė Kačkutė
  • Daiva Skučienė

MotherNet Aims of the Working Group: develop collaborative research in the area of mothers and work 

Activities / Progress:

1) Presenting as a panel for the Motherhood and Work: An Interdisciplinary Conference at Maynooth University on June 24th and 25th, 2021.

2) Reading chapters of the book Women, Inequality and Media Work.
O’ Brien, A. (2019) Women, Inequality and Media Work. London & New York: Routledge to be discussed in relation to all of our individual research projects.

Negotiating Childlessness

  • Julie Rodgers
  • Jenny Björklund
  • Linara Bartkuvienė
  • Dagnė Beržaitė
  • Mercedes Carbayo Abengozar
  • Margaretha Fahlgren
  • Dovilė Kuzminskaitė
  • Lynsey Kavanagh
  • Maria Sebastià Sáez
  • Lina Šumskaitė

MotherNet Aims of the Working Group: produce a special issue or a book on the topic of negotiating childlessness.  

Activities / Progress:

So far literature on voluntary/involuntary childlessness has been reviewed focusing specifically on the boundaries of and the shift from one form of childlessness to another. The movies Private life (2018), What we wanted (2020), and the documentary of the project Lunàdigas have been watched and the representations of involuntary childlessness in them discussed. Currently the group members consider what kind of material they can use for individual articles planning.

Lone Mothers

  • Ciara Bradley
  • Mercedes Carbayo-Abengozar  
  • Helena Wahlström Henriksson
  • Violeta Gevorgianienė
  • Eglė Šumskienė
  • Greta Skubiejūtė
  • Daiva Skučienė
  • Gloria Kirwan
  • Fergus Ryan
  • Anne O’Brien
  • Kathryn McGarry
  • Lina Šumskaitė

MotherNet Aims of the Working Group: produce a special issue or a book on the topic of lone motherhood across our three countries/ more broadly.

Activities / Progress:

The group started to discuss the idea to work together on a special issue. We discussed an interdisciplinary project with articles from across the various fields that we work in and also with the aim of creating opportunities for us to write together across the three universities and across our disciplines.  

Mothers and Sex Work

  • Irma Kondrataitė
  • Kathryn McGarry

MotherNet Aims of the Working Group: produce a joint article on mothering and sex work in variuos countries.

The aims of this working group is to collaborate on our shared interests regarding mothering, marginalization and sex work with a view to jointly writing a journal article (s), potentially presenting our work in upcoming research conferences.

Project on Preterm Newborn Mothers

  • Rūta Morkūnienė
  • Diana Ramašauskaitė
  • Sara Sylvén
  • Evelina Sabaitytė
  • Rūta Einikytė

MotherNet Aims of the Working Group: develop a collaborative research project.

Activities / Progress:

The group of scientists is currently working on a literature review and developing the final questionnaire for preterm newborn mothers regarding their psychological status, maternal attachment difficulties, perceived stress, social support, and preterm birth experience and satisfaction.

Migrant Mothers

  • Inga Hilbig
  • Eglė Kačkutė
  • Vitalija Kazlauskienė
  • Violeta Gevorgianienė

MotherNet Aims of the Working Group:  1. Produce a joint article on mother’s emotional responses to language transmission in diaspora. 2. Developing an interdisciplinary research project on migrant mothers from and in Lithuania.

Activities / Progress:

We have been discussing the possible theoretical approaches for the article.

In the frame of cooperation Inga Hilbig has made a presentation on migrant Lithuanian women’s emotional responses to unsuccessful bilingualism of their children: “It’s not how I imagined: mothers’ discourses on inharmonious early bilingualism”. The presentation was made on the 24th of March in Maynooth University School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures on-line seminar, and it was followed up by an interesting discussion.

Publications

Cross-disciplinary

“On ne peut rien contreune fille qui rêve”: TeenagePregnancy as MaternalEmpowerment or MaternalEntrapment in 17 Filles

Rodgers, Julie, and Ciara Gorman 2023 “On ne peut rien contre une fille qui rêve”: Teenage Pregnancy as Maternal Empowerment or Maternal Entrapment in 17 Filles. Modern Languages Open, 2023(1): 23 pp. 1–10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.456

by Julie Rodgers, Private: Ciara Gorman
Read more
Cross-disciplinary

Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing

Check out a new open access book with contributions by several MotherNet colleagues on ‘Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing’!

by Helena Wahlström Henriksson, Anna Williams, Margaretha Fahlgren, Lisa Grahn, Jenny Björklund, Eglė Kačkutė, Valerie Heffernan, Elizabeth Kella, Elizabeth Podnieks, Christine Hamm
Read more
Cultural studies

Thought Experiments in Video Games: Exploring the (Un)Ethics of Motherhood in Frictional Games’ Amnesia: Rebirth

Atėnė Mendelytė. (2023). Thought Experiments in Video Games: Exploring the (Un)Ethics of Motherhood in Frictional Games’ Amnesia: Rebirth. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231153715

by Atėnė Mendelytė
Read more
Cultural studies

Towards the Problem of Motherhood in Russian Literature of the 19th Century

Dagnė Beržaitė. (2023). Проблема представления материнства в русской литературе XIX века. Slavvaria, 1/2022(1/2022), 85–92. https://doi.org/10.15170/SV.1/2022.85

by Dagnė Beržaitė
Read more