FEATURED AUTHOR
Elizabeth Perkins
Elizabeth R Perkins has been a researcher and educator for all her varied professional life. Education for Childbirth and Parenthood was her first book. Her subsequent independent research practice intertwined the themes of professional development and the needs of women at different stages of their lives: pregnancy, motherhood, menopause and older age. Her later publications continue to reflect her commitment to listening to women’s views and working with practitioners to improve practice.
Subjects: Health and Social Care
Biography
Elizabeth Perkins began her varied career in health education and research when she worked with the Leverhulme Health Education Project at the University of Nottingham, where she wrote Education for Childbirth and Parenthood . She then worked for the local Health Authority, with a brief which included helping to improve the parenthood classes she had investigated. For four years she worked with local midwives and health visitors, in tandem with her own PhD, Education of Persuasion: health service methods of communicating with parents. She also supported health promotion officers in researching their own practice, and edited Nottingham Practical Papers in Health Education, which Nottingham Health Education Unit produced and distributed.In 1990 she became a freelance researcher, keeping her links with Nottingham University Department of Adult Education, for whom she taught on the course for nurse and midwife teachers. She developed links with Sheffield University Department of Midwifery Research, where she co-edited Reflections on Midwifery with Professor Mavis Kirkham. She continued to work with midwives and health visitors, and with the national Health Education Council, and extended her range both geographically and professionally, working with a wide range of groups. While free-lancing, she published in a variety of professional and academic journals, and co-edited Evidence-Based Health Promotion with Ina Simnett and Linda Wright.
In her early 50s, after a series of family bereavements, she decided to close down her free-lance practice, reinvent herself professionally, and work on menopause, a period of women’s lives which continues to be feared, under-supported and poorly understood by too many women. She ran a workshop programme to provide women with personal space and tools to explore their future, developed a website with information and links to clinically based advice sites, and self- published Journey through Menopause, an edited book of women’s experiences, and Exploring New Paths: emotional and spiritual growth for women at mid-life. At 60 she moved on again, exploring her creativity in textile art, song and dance. She is an active Quaker and has tutored at Woodbrooke, the Quaker study centre in Birmingham.
Education
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BA History, University College, London 1970
Cert Ed Kings College, London 1971
MA African Area Studies, SOAS, London 1972
PhD, Faculty of Education, Nottingham 1986
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Books
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