Larissa Shaw

Thesis title:

Why Women remain on trial: A retrospection of the Witch in historical medical practice to centralise contemporary narratives in endometriosis healthcare and the gender pain-gap

Research Area

Visual Arts

Publications

☼ Art Workers Between Self Organising and Collectivity -- Pooleyville article, written with Thomas Eke, Lucie MacGregor, Emily Roderick, as Matters of Interest (2021). Readable here: https://pooleyville.city/articles/art-workers-between-self-organising-and-collectivity

☼ All we Every Wanted Was Everything -- a-n 40th anniversary newsletter. Collaborative publication with Black Hole Club (2021). Readable here: https://issuu.com/anartistsinfo/docs/artists_newsletter_issue_1_1980s_black_hole_club

☼ Mayday Reader. Collaborative publication with Vivid Projects, Birmingham (2020). Readable here: https://arena-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/7090816/d24dd1442fcd4f95f1e9e94dfc28b764.pdf?1588262087&fbclid=IwAR2Z1UBdH2pZBT9DiUSFfGSrB30ALtVef1K3gbXkspmZzeOQQRdpjYgSMwQ

☼ Archive, Exchange, and Process in a Pandemic: Conversation Between Leanne O'Connor and Larissa Shaw. Published by Radical Art Review (2020). Readable here: https://www.academia.edu/50839053/Archive_Exchange_and_Process_in_a_Pandemic_Conversation_Between_Leanne_OConnor_and_Larissa_Shaw_audio_accessible_curation_lockdown_Visual_Arts

☼ Art Licks Weekend 2019 London. Group publication with Grand Union group GU WOMEN) (2019). Readable here: https://www.academia.edu/50838945/Small_Acts_of_Care

☼ Critical Sound, a review of the Haroon Mirza exhibition at IKON Gallery, Birmingham (2019). Readable here: https://www.ikon-gallery.org/news/view/critical-sound

☼ Post-Matter: Wearable Art that Blurs the Boundaries between Body and Environment (2017) Readable here: https://esthesis.org/post-matter-wearable-art-that-blurs-the-boundaries-between-bodies-and-environment-larissa-e-shaw/

Conferences

♒︎ National Trust & New Art West Midlands residency conference at University of Birmingham (2019)

♒︎ Random String conference at Coventry University (2019)

Other Research Interests

My research is situated within a continuum historical feminist lens (Federici, 2010, Precarious Labour: A Feminist Viewpoint), exploring how women’s pain, health autonomy, and access to healthcare are entangled with broader intersections of gender and disability.

I speculate on the European witch hunts, particularly in England, as a historical framework through which to interrogate enduring narratives that shape gendered inequities in contemporary healthcare provision, particularly within gynaecology and obstetrics education and practice. My work examines how these legacies continue to misinform testimonial injustices (Fricker, 2018) and diagnostic disparities within endometriosis healthcare.

Methodologically, I employ practice-based research grounded in feminist-disability studies, organising focus and support groups to cultivate praxes of care, community, listening, and solidarity. Through these praxes, I utilise artistic methods as a means to mediate and hold space for complex, often painful conversations about the body, medicine, and institutional authority within endometriosis healthcare.

My wider interests include disability and gender studies, Renaissance depictions of the female body in anatomical illustrations, and working-class women’s* oral histories. I am currently training as a death midwife, exploring liminal spaces between life and death, and how cultural understandings of care persist beyond the boundaries of the living body.

*Any terminology refering to 'women' or 'female' is inclusive of Trans, Genderqueer, and Non-Binary identities, reflexive of the research objectives.

Memberships

Fellow of AdvanceHE