M.A. Magdalena Skowronski disputerer for ph.d.-graden i helsevitenskap og vil offentlig forsvare avhandlingen:
“Will I get cancer again?
An ethnography of worries, healing landscapes and sensation-to-symptom processes among people living in the aftermath of cancer in rural Norway”
Kort sammendrag av avhandlingen:
Today, 71% of those who are diagnosed with cancer live five years or longer after treatment. Although the level of mortality varies considerably between different cancer diagnoses, the total number of people who recover after cancer is increasing. There is a need to gain knowledge on how people who live in the aftermath of cancer treatment experience health and illness, bodily sensations, everyday life and relations to the health care system. Several remote municipalities in Northern Norway face challenges regarding the accessibility of specialized health care, which influences the experience of the aftermath of cancer treatment.
The main goal of the study was to investigate how people with chronic cancer experience bodily sensations, make sense of and act towards cancer illness and health. This involved an exploration of the social processes and relational dimensions of sensations and care-seeking processes.
The study builds upon 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2014 in a coastal village in the northernmost county of Norway, located far off from specialist health care services. Ten people from the village, with different cancer diagnoses and having undergone cancer treatment from three months to ten years earlier, were the core participants in the study. During fieldwork, I took part in the everyday life of participants and in the village in general, and interviewed them regularly on experiences of illness and health, treatment, bodily sensations, activities, and relations to family, friends, co-villagers and health care professionals.
The findings of the study are presented in three scientific articles, all published internationally. The articles focus on ways of living, sensing and coping in a small remote village after cancer diagnosis and treatment. They contribute to the understanding of living in the aftermath of cancer treatment in a rural context far away from specialist health care services. The analysis builds upon different analytical approaches to understand social processes of the participants’ bodily sensations, and a) their coping in everyday life in relation to familiar landscapes, b) how they cope with worries of relapse in relations with others, and c) the social and moral embeddedness of bodily sensations.
The study contributes to the theoretical field of ‘medical anthropology of the sensations’, to an anthropological understanding of emotions and to understanding embodied relations to local landscapes when living in the aftermath of cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Veiledere
Hovedveileder førsteamanuensis Nina Foss
Biveileder professor Mette Beck Risør
Biveileder seniorforsker Rikke Sand Andersen
Bedømmelseskomiteen
Professor Frode Fadnes Jacobsen, Høgskulen på Vestlandet, Senter for omsorgsforskning – 1. opponent
Professor Helle Ussing Timm, Videncenter for Rehabilitering og Palliation, Region Syddanmark og Syddansk Universitet, Danmark – 2. opponent
Førsteamanuensis Bodil Hansen Blix, Institutt for helse- og omsorgsfag, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, Universitetet i Tromsø – Norges arktiske universitet – leder av komité
Disputasleder
Førsteamanuensis May-Lill Johansen, Institutt for samfunnsmedisin, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, Universitetet i Tromsø – Norges arktiske universitet
Prøveforelesning over oppgitt emne holdes kl. 10.15, samme sted: “The significance and meaning of "thick description" in anthropological fieldwork”