Speakers:

 

Professor Cecily Begley holds the Chair of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin. She was awarded MA, MSc and PhD degrees from Trinity College, and the Fellowship of the Faculty of Nursing from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She is a Fellow of the European Academy of Nursing Science and an elected Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.

Professor Begley has a 25-year history of research activity and has led many research teams to successful completion of diverse projects, focusing mainly on physiological childbirth, midwife-led and women-centred maternity care, and self-esteem and assertiveness in student nurses and midwives.

 

Dr. Hanne Kjærgaard is a midwife since 1972 and holds a position as a senior research midwife and a research leader for nurses and midwives at Juliane Marie Centre for Women, Children and Reproduction, Copenhagen University Hospital. Since February 2009 she is also an associated professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Copenhagen University (part time).

She has been the Project Head of the ”The Danish Dystocia Study, a multi-centre study on dystocia in nulliparous women”, as part of her doctorate at Lund University in Sweden from 2003 to 2007.

 

Professor Billie Hunter is the first Midwifery Professor in Wales, based in the Institute for Health Research, Swansea University. She is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the University of Surrey, Chair of the Iolanthe Midwifery Trust and Chair of the All Wales Midwifery and Reproductive Health Research Forum. Professor Hunter has been a midwife for thirty years and has worked in several settings, before moving into midwifery education and research in 1996.

Professor Hunter leads a research programme which uses qualitative approaches to investigate the culture and working practices of midwives and how these impact on quality of care and service user experiences throughout the whole childbirth experience. Her particular research interests are in the emotional aspects of midwives’ work, ‘ways of knowing’ in midwifery, and the history of maternity care.

 

Dr. Erica Schytt is a midwife and a researcher at Karolinska Institute and a practice developer at Falun Hospital, Sweden. The subject of her thesis was women’s health after childbirth and was included in a national Swedish study of 3000 women. On-going projects are a national study of newly educated midwives clinical competence and an RCT on acupuncture for labour pain.

 

Professor Holly Kennedy has been a midwife for 25 years. She is a graduate of the Frontier School of Midwifery & Family Nursing. She obtained her masters degree from the Medical College of Georgia as a family nurse practitioner and her doctoral degree from the University of Rhode Island. She has practiced in numerous settings including rural health, community and tertiary hospitals, and in academic practices. In 2009 she became the first Helen Varney Professor of Midwifery at Yale University and President (elect) of the American College of Nurse-Midwives. Her research includes numerous qualitative studies exploring the work of midwives and its relationship to health outcomes.

 

Professor Friederike zu Sayn-Wittgenstein holds the Chair in Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, Germany, since 2000. She obtained a dual Master of Science degree in Maternal and Child Health from the Harvard School of Public Health and in Primary Care Nursing from Simmons College. She holds a masters degree in Public Health and a doctoral degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. For many years she has practiced as a midwife in various settings, as well as a health consultant and midwife in development collaboration (Brazil, South-East Asia) and in the Safe Motherhood Programme of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva. Professor Sayn-Wittgenstein leads a research programme on midwifery care concepts and their impact on women’s and their young families’ health. In 2008 she initiated Germany’s first Bachelor of Science Programme in Midwifery.

 

 

Moderator: 

 

Brigitte Hegemann is an educationalist and psychologist and runs her business "Consulting and Training" in Hamburg. She has been working as a business consultant, trainer and coach for German as well as for international companies since 1981. She has also studied and worked as a consultant and trainer in the United States. Her focus is on developing strategic leadership and management programs for chief executives, middle managers, high achievers and specialists, f.e. change processes, teambuilding, time management and communication workshops.