Hello and welcome to FAB Gab. this is the podcast for the International Journal of feminist approaches to bioethics brought to you by fab Network. My name is Kathryn MacKay, and today I'm joined by Emma Tumilty, from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. And we're doing a little something different today, because this is a kind of handover episode. So welcome, Emma. Thanks for being here.
It's lovely to be here with you. It's very sad though. These are big shoes to fill.
Thank you. So Emma will be taking over as host of FAB gab for the next little while, because I'm going off on sabbatical to do some fun things, including some research and some travel. So I thought it best to hand over the reins of FAB gab. But I really loved doing it. And I think it's going to be in great hands. Emma, why don't you introduce yourself to the audience?
Cool. Okay. Well, I'm Emma Tumilty. I'm an assistant professor here in the department of bioethics and health humanities at UTMB, and our Director of Graduate Studies. I have a background in health services research and bioethics training, and I have a commitment to feminist and community engaged approaches to my work. I tell people, generally I'm a bit of a buzzy bee, and I like to stick my nose in lots of flowers. So my research areas are diverse, but they generally fall into two buckets, one about sort of research ethics practice and review. And then the other one about justice and access issues, whether in research or clinical settings.
Thanks and how long have you been involved with IJFAB?
actually, so when I was doing my PhD, a wee while ago now. I was very lucky. My department in New Zealand funded us to go to one international conference for the time of our PhD. And so I went to FAB in what would have been the year it was an Edinburgh which is 2015 or 16 [Kate: 16 2016]. Yeah. And I met lots of awesome folk like Vikki Entwistle and Alison Reiheld, and got involved that way. Got involved with the board, then got involved with the journal just loves being part of a community of people doing bioethics with a really different perspective that dealt with my personal and professional philosophy of what matters in this kind of space. That wasn't something that was, you know, New Zealand. I love it. I miss it dearly, but it's at the end of the world. And it's a small, it's a small place. That's a country that is a small town almost sometime. And so it was nice to connect internationally with people who had the same sort of intellectual interest and approaches.
That's so cool. I was at that. I was at that fab conference during my PhD. Yeah.
I've heard that so many times that people that I've met now that I didn't meet while I was there, but it was a seminal seminal conference for so many. It was yeah, it was it was really good even though I hate that word. I wish I picked a different one.
important conference, exactly.
Crucial. But yeah, I think it's just really important that we continue to build and sustain this community of people with our shared interests. Because, yeah, it's an it's an important contribution to the field. I think it's important in terms of the impact it has beyond so I'm really glad to be involved and get connected to people like yourself and so many others. Yes,
and I'm so glad that you're gonna be taking over the reins of the podcast. I think you're gonna do a great job.
Like I say big shoes to fill. I haven't quite got your dulcet tones.
It's all about the microphone, folks.
But I'm really looking forward to it. I wonder if in helping me take over in transition. You can tell us a little bit about what you really like about doing the podcast.
I've loved doing the podcast. I I started out three years ago doing fab gab and I was motivated to do it partly because I love radio. I love podcasts. and I really enjoy listening to people speak about their work. And honestly, sometimes I prefer this kind of format. To know if I should then go and read a paper, it's a nice way to kind of cheat a little bit. Hear somebody describe what they've done and sort of think, okay, that, you know, I would like to read more about that, or, or not, or whatever.
I think that applies to the listeners as well.
Yeah, that's what I thought too. I thought that that would be, you know, a good way to spread people's work. And I also was really hoping that this would provide a platform for people to promote their work. And, you know, I guess, we're always sort of looking for ways to reach out beyond academia. And I'm not sure how many listeners we have outside of academia. But that was at least a part of the idea is that this is a really accessible way for people who might not be in academic bioethics to get a taste of what we do. And people can, you know, guests on the show can send their podcast wherever they want, send it out to people who are in industry, or who work in advocacy, or activism, or friends or family, or, you know, really whatever they'd like. So it's a great way, I hope to promote each other's work, and spread each other's great ideas further around. And then I think the other thing that I really like is to get to talk to all the people who have published in the journals. So I've really, you know, I've read, I've read a few issues cover to cover now, the cool thing to do, too.
It's definitely one of the things that I'll be taking away from listening to you is the questions you asked that get deeper than the paper or into why somebody was thinking about writing that or how they wrote that. And I think those kinds of discussions or the information about how the writing process meant is so important for different people listening as well. Yeah. Lots, I'm taking notes.
Yeah, that was what I was hoping do because I think that it can be, I think, the journal, the publishing process itself can be kind of opaque if you're starting out in a PhD, and you're not really familiar with it, or even if you're sort of like later. And I thought that maybe some of the, you know, hearing, hearing people even really established scholars talk about the struggle that they had with this paper can just be a way of sharing the experience, like, Oh, that's right. Like, this isn't always easy. Some papers come out very smoothly, and get published quickly, and other papers you just wrestle with for a couple of years before you kind of get it right. And that's been my experience, for sure. And I think that it's, um, it's been really interesting talking to people through the podcast and hearing all kinds of different experiences with writing, and with reviewers and stuff like that, where you think, oh, yeah, like this. This can be an uphill battle sometimes. And that's okay. It just, I think it makes the work better.
Absolutely. I wonder as well, if you have any favorite episodes, or for whatever reason, whether it was the paper or the conversation or something happened? I don't know.
That's such a good question. I think it would be hard to just pick a few favorites, you know, because the papers in the journal are really diverse. And that's one of the things that I love about the journal. It's that Well, I mean, feminist bioethics touches on really everything. So there's not sort of just one topic, I guess some of the papers that I enjoyed talking about most were ones that I actually had the areas that I had least familiarity with. So there were a couple of papers that came out last year that were about temporality. And that's really not something that I know that much about, and there was one that was about clock time versus stomach time. And I think that that was, that was Megan Dean. And I just loved it. And that's an idea that I keep thinking about, I keep thinking about the difference between the way that we approach time as, as if it's, you know, the little blocks in our calendar are these little fungible units that we can move around versus time as the seasons, where things are, it's like process oriented things take the time they take. I just really, I really love that idea. And so that's one that stuck with me. Another one that I thought was really interesting, for me at least was the one that's about it's a it's a one from like, quite early on. And it was about public health and precarity by Michael Doan and Amy Harbin. And I guess because I do public health ethics that was one that I thought about quite a bit. They did some work in there in that paper about the different kinds of public health actors so Well, I in my work usually think about public health as a state actor, governmental actor, but they were thinking about public health in terms of like the charity organizations in the hospital organizations, especially in the American context, which isn't a context that I'm familiar with either. So that was super interesting, too. It's just, it's funny how some of the papers have really intersected with my interests. And some of them have been completely different. But every single paper, I learned something new, and it's been awesome.
I mean, I've got lots to look forward to not that I don't obviously read the general anyway. But I think there's also a difference. If you're reading for some kind of activity versus reading the journals out there and you're trying to look what's in it this month? I think you get into it differently, especially if you have a conversation with them.
Yeah, exactly. And I was, I would always try to read the papers with an eye with the thought in mind about how to prompt the author's to say more about what was going on. Not to be critical, but to think like, what are some questions that a student might ask, what are questions that people coming to this fresh might ask like, what are some of the, maybe the the, quote, obvious, unquote, questions that as academics, sometimes we just don't notice? Or we assume, or whatever, and which is fair enough, but when you think you might have listeners who are not as far along in the field, or maybe not in the field at all, then it's sort of like, you know, let's, let's unpack all of this. And I think that's really fun.
Again, furiously taking notes. I see it's there probably will be a lot of emailing.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I think that you'll have a wonderful time. And it really is an honor to be able to speak to all of our contributors to the journal. I have really loved being the host of fat gab. And maybe at some point in the future, I can come back to it. Who knows I won't I won't steal it from you, Emma.
I won't know. It's your baby. But maybe we'll also have you on to talk about your work, that would be really fun.
That'd be really fun to be a guest. I would love it.
Lots, lots of opportunities to get you back, I think.
Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for listening to this little handover episode of FAB gab. You can find Emma's latest episodes coming out sometime in the near future. And we'll be providing transcripts and papers as usual. Fab gab is hosted now by Emma Tumilty. And previously by me, Kathryn MacKay. You can find our other episodes on Spotify and you can subscribe to fad gab so that you'll never miss an episode. Thanks for listening and welcome Emma,
