Accessibility statement

Dr Victoria Land
Research Associate

Profile

Biography

  • Conversation Analysis
  • Healthcare Interactions, with a Focus on Decision-Making
  • Labour and Childbirth
  • Palliative Care
  • Gender and Sexuality
  • Feminism

Victoria completed her undergraduate degree and PhD in Sociology at the University of York in 2002 and 2006 respectively. Her PhD, entitled “Doing Politically Engaged Conversation Analysis with Talk by Lesbian and Gay Men: Categories, Person Reference, and Heteronormativity in Action”, was supervised by Prof. Celia Kitzinger. Next she completed a two year research project at the University of Surrey in partnership with BT analysing the continuation of communication across different media over time.

Since then, Victoria has contributed on an ad hoc basis to projects at the University of York and the University of Southampton but her main activities have been at the University of Nottingham where she has conducted two systematic reviews. The first reviewed conversation analytic and discourse analytic research pertaining to how practitioners communicate with patients about difficult and uncertain future issues, focusing particularly on future illness progression and end of life. The second focused on communication practices that encourage and constrain shared decision-making in health- care encounters yielded by conversation analytic studies, focusing on whether and how practices encourage participation by patients and others.

Subsequently, Victoria continued at the University of Nottingham researching decision-making in end of life care. Using the perspectives and methods of CA, her research analysed audio-visual recordings of hospice consultations with a focus on how decisions and plans are made, challenged and revised to contribute towards giving patients a better end of life experience.

Currently, Victoria is a co-applicant on a project that uses conversation analysis to understand how decisions are made during labour and childbirth (see ‘Research’ section). This study is being conducted by an interdisciplinary team between University of York (Department of Sociology), Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation trust.

Research

Overview

Most recently Victoria’s research has focused on decision-making in healthcare interactions with a particular focus on palliative care and childbirth:

Voices in Partnership: Interactional practices of decision-making during childbirth in maternity units

Also known as VIP: Voices in Partnership, Video Informed Practice

This study seeks to video record (or audio record) 50 births in birth units at two sites (Halifax and Sheffield). This data will be analysed using conversation analysis and supported by antenatal and postnatal questionnaires relating to participants expectations and experience of giving birth and interviews with midwives and obstetricians at each site. The study intends to generate detailed information about talk during labour and childbirth to inform and empower staff, people giving birth and their birth partners to communicate in ways that promote choice. This project is funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR).

VERDIS: Video-based communication research and training in decision-making, empathy and pain management in supportive and palliative care

This project used conversation analysis to examine 37 interactions between palliative medicine doctors and inpatients and outpatients (and their companions if present) in an English hospice with a focus on decision-making, empathy, and pain management. Stage one of the project was funded by the Research Development Fund of the University of Nottingham Centre for Advanced Studies and Sue Ryder Centre for Supportive, Palliative and End of Life Care and stage two was funded by The Heath Foundation Insight Award.

Publications

Selected publications

Jackson, C., Land, V., Holmes, E. (2017). Healthcare Professionals’ Assertions and Women’s Responses During Labour: A Conversation Analytic Study of Data from ‘One Born Every Minute’. Patient Education and Counseling. 100(3): 465-472.

Land, V., Frohlich, D., & Lumkin, M. (2008). Conveying Availability and Capability to Communicate in Naturalistic Interaction, in BCS-HCI 2008, Proceedings of the 22nd British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: Culture, Creativity, Interaction (Volume 2): 43-46.

Land, V., & Kitzinger, C. (2005). 'Speaking as a Lesbian: Correcting the Heterosexist Presumption.' Research on Language and Social Interaction, 38(4): 371-416. 

Land, V., & Kitzinger, C. (2006). 'Closet Talk: The Contemporary Relevance of the Closet in LGBT Interaction', in V. Clarke and E. Peel (Eds) Out in Psychology: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Perspectives. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.

Land, V., & Kitzinger, C. (2007). ‘Some Uses of Third-Person Reference Forms in Speaker Self-Reference.’ Discourse Studies, 9(4): 493-525.

Land, V., & Kitzinger, C. (2007). 'Contesting Same-Sex Marriage in Talk-in-Interaction.' Feminism & Psychology: An International Journal, 17(2): 173-183.

Land, V., & Kitzinger, C. (2011). ‘Categories in Talk-in-Interaction: Gendering Speaker and Recipient’, in S. Speer and E. Stokoe (eds.) Conversation and Gender (pp.48-63).  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Land, V., Parry, R., Seymour, J. (2017). Communication Practices that Encourage and Constrain Shared Decision Making in Health-Care Encounters: Systematic Review of Conversation Analytic Research. Health Expectations. 00:1-20.

Land, V., & Rickford, R. (2007). Are LGB People Human? The European Convention on Heterosexual Rights. Lesbian & Gay Psychology Review, 8(1).

Parry, R. H., & Land, V. (2013). ‘Systematically Reviewing and Synthesizing Evidence from Conversation Analytic and Related Discursive Research to Inform Healthcare Communication Practice and Policy: An Illustrated Guide.’ BMC Medical Research Methodology, 13:69.

Parry, R. H., Land, V., & Seymour, J. (2014). ‘How to communicate with patients about future illness progression and end of life: a systematic review.’ BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care, 00:1-11.

Pino, M., Parry, R., Land, V., Faull, C., Feathers, L., & Seymour, J. (2016). Engaging Terminally ill Patients in End of Life Talk: How Experienced Palliative Medicine Doctors Navigate the Dilemma of Promoting Discussions About Dying. PlosONE. 11(5): e0156174.

Victoria Land

Contact details

Dr Victoria Land
Research Associate
Department of Sociology Law & Management Building
University of York
YO10 5GD

Tel: 01904 32 3055