Upcoming webinars: Marking motherhood – the tattoos of mothers living apart from their children

As part of her Marking Motherhood project (details here) Lisa Morriss, Lecturer in Social Work, has arranged two linked webinars, during the ESRC Festival of Social Science. Please only register if you are able to attend both webinars. The first webinar is on Saturday 7 November at 2pm and the second on Saturday 14 November at 2pm. The events will be held online on MS Teams and you will be sent links to both events when you register.

In the first webinar on Saturday 7 November at 2pm, Siobhan Beckwith and Lisa Morriss will give an overview of the project and discuss the findings through narratives and visual images. Funded by the Sociological Review Foundation, Marking Motherhood takes tattoos as a vehicle for storytelling, a means to explore and learn about the lives of women whose experiences place them at the margins of society. Mothers living apart from their children following state intervention experience personal loss and social stigma. Having had Local Authority involvement and with their children living with foster carers, adoptive parents or wider family networks the dominant narrative of mothering is unavailable to these mothers and new, less familiar stories emerge.

You can opt to receive a small bundle which will include material about the project and an invitation to contribute to the second webinar. Further details about this will be given in the first webinar. If you would like us to post a bundle to you, please email Lisa with your contact details on: lisa.morriss@lancaster.ac.uk.

The second webinar will take place on Saturday 14 November at 2pm. We will present your contributions and reflect on how they connect with the mothers’ tattoos. These webinars are taking place during a pandemic in which we have all had restrictions placed upon who we can and can’t see. Our interviews took place prior to lockdown but all the women we interviewed have had their ability to connect with their children restricted, mediated and in many cases severed. As we connect remotely you will be invited to respond to the project so far.

Please register via eventbrite.  For more details contact Lisa Morriss (lisa.morriss@lancaster.ac.uk).