The 2nd Annual Narratives of Health & Wellbeing Research Conference 2017
Rise: A conference exploring resilience, writing and wellbeing
Conference Program - 26th & 27th October 2017
Welcome Function - 26th October
Welcome Drinks and Special Private Viewing of the Noosa Art Space Exhibition
Thursday 26th October 5.00pm - 7.00pm
Conference and Welcome Function Registration from 4.30pm
Cost: Included in conference registration
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This early evening is an opportunity for you to network with conference colleagues while viewing the Noosa Art Space Exhibition. There will be a formal welcome from the Conference Leaders and a featured floor talk about the exhibiton and its link with the conference theme.
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Full Day Conference
Friday 27th October 9.00am - 4.30pm
Conference Registration from 8.30am
Cost: $120 (Concession $80)
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The conference is an exciting opportunity for delegates to interact across a diverse range
of interests. Presentations will be from a range of speakers and center around the conference
theme of resilience, writing and wellbeing.
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Keynote Addresses
Our special Keynote Address will be given by Dr Kate Ames, co-author of the book Will to Live.
In 2012, Dr Kate Ames’ brother Matthew had his limbs amputated to save his life. He survived to tell his
tale…to her. In three months, she wrote 90,000 words based on countless hours of interviews with
Matthew, his wife Diane, and members of their family that became Will to Live, a memoir published by
Penguin that debuted in the Top 10 Australian non-fiction list. As a form of narrative case study, Kate
will explain how and why she told the story. Matthew’s story of survival is actually a story of opportunity. It is about everyone giving everyone else a chance. From the surgeons who gave Matthew a chance to the faith given to her by her family and a major publisher to write the story as a ‘first-time’ author. She will explore how the telling of the story brought people together, provided hope for others, and allowed the family to set a moment in time before moving on. In the telling of this personal narrative, Kate will share some lessons learned about the journey.
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Kate Ames is a nationally recognised tertiary educator, a military officer, and communication professional who has combined skills in journalism and media with an academic career as a cultural sociologist in language, culture, and community. She started in magazine editorial and edited a national newsstand magazine in the 1990s prior to moving into corporate publications and then academia. As an academic in professional communication, Kate has continued to practice as a photographer, film-maker, journalist, and public relations practitioner. She celebrates 20 years in the Australian Army (part-time) this year and currently serves as a public affairs officer working in an instructional role with junior officers. She counts as lifetime career highlights her experience as a photographer at 1996 Olympic Games, the opportunity to deploy on military operations in a public affairs role during the 2010 independence day commemorations in East Timor, and writing a memoir about her brother Matthew. She is a passionate educator and was awarded a national citation for teaching quality in 2015. She holds a Bachelor degree in business communication, a Masters’ degree in cultural studies, and a PhD from the University of Sydney that examined the way in which a sense of community is fostered through language. She has a record of publications in storytelling, community, connection, and broadcast talk.
Our second Keynote Address will be given by Professor Margaret McAllister.
Her presentation is entitled Using a critical-resilience lens to analyse Paradise Road.
In popular culture nurses are often portrayed as resilient but in ways that support the status
quo: they cope with what-ever challenges come their way; suffer in silence; and have heroic
qualities that single them out as unique individuals. This does not reflect the reality, or the insights,
that nurses usually work in teams, and their effectiveness depends on collaboration, creative coping, buoyant approaches to rising above adversity. Often representations of nursing in popular culture support a dominant narrative about resilience that is similarly problematic – the appealing story of the brave individual who is challenged by, but then triumphs over, a major crisis. This narrative, also called the hero’s journey (Campbell, 1949), has been circulating in Western society for centuries, and is often taught as foundational to the construction of a compelling human story.
The film Paradise Road (Beresford, 1997), is one of the few narratives where nursing is represented as a group activity. It portrays, moreover, a group that is tested in extreme crisis and responds collectively. As a case study of critical resilience in action, Paradise Road can suggest innovative ways of thinking about nursing’s future, and constructing alternative resilience narratives.
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Margaret is Professor of Nursing at CQUniversity, in Noosa. She is an award winning educator, sought after research supervisor and is experienced in working across disciplines. She has co-authored several books: The Clinical Helper, Stories in Mental Health, The Resilient Nurse and Solution Focused Nursing.
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Conference - 27th October
Concurrent Workshop Sessions
Thursday 26th October 1.00pm - 4.30pm
Workshop and pre-conference registration from 12.30pm
Cost: $40
Workshop A - Developing Narrative Writing Skills
Leanne Dodd
This introductory workshop is for those who have a story to tell, be it creative non-fiction or fiction, but who may be daunted by the idea of turning it into a full-length narrative work. We will develop a methodical approach to cultivating your story ideas and acquire a strong grasp of the fundamentals of narrative storytelling including rules, structure, plotting and characterisation. We will then engage in practical exercises to map and outline your work to get you started and discuss tips to keep you going. The workshop will not only benefit those setting out to write creative works for the first time, but also those who would like to refresh or further develop their skills.
This workshop will be facilitated by Leanne Dodd, who is an author and researcher with qualifications in arts, education, mental health and communications. She serves as Chair of the Queensland Writers Centre and as has acted as associate editor for a Special Issue of TEXT journal. Leanne has published academic research on writing about trauma and the transformative potential of creative writing. Under her pseudonym, Lea Scott, she has published three fictional novels, The Ned Kelly Game (2009), Eclipsed (2010) and One for All (2013), mentored new writers under the Queensland Writers Centre ‘Writer’s Surgery’ program and facilitated writing workshops and seminars for writing organisations and festivals throughout Queensland.
Workshop B - Developing Academic Writing Skills
Margaret McAllister
This workshop is for conference delegates who find it challenging to convert a conference paper
into a scholarly article. We will focus on the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing and
Axon: Creative Explorations, to assist each person to produce a compelling introduction that contributes to that journal’s conversation with its readers, a logical and persuasive body of the paper that conforms to the conventions appropriate to your topic, a conclusion that summarises and returns to the present, guiding readers to think about future practice. Finally, we produce an abstract that is succinct, innovative and intriguing.
Margaret McAllister is Professor of Nursing at CQUniversity with degrees in nursing, arts and education. Her research and teaching focus for the past 20 years has been in mental health, nursing education and inter-professional learning. She has co-authored four textbooks: Solution focused nursing (2007), The resilient nurse (2011) and Stories in mental health (2013), and The clinical helper (2015) and three self-help guides called Seeking solutions to self-injury (2010, 2013). Over her career, she has been the recipient of four awards for excellence in teaching, including in 2010 a national citation for outstanding contributions to student learning for the creation of a solution-focused nursing approach. She is the recent past Associate Editor for the UK journal, Nurse education in practice, a recent past board director for Australia’s peak body for mental health nurses, the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses, and a special editor for Nurse Education Today. She is pursuing a program of cross disciplinary research with Professor Donna Lee Brien, an expert in creative writing and the humanities, on the issue of humanising the health workforce.
