Dr Marie-Clare Balaam

Marie-Clare is involved in a range of national and international research projects related to maternity care and the wellbeing of women in the perinatal period. Her publications and research primarily relate to maternity care for marginalised women, social support and the perinatal wellbeing of migrant women and their access to maternity care.

Marie-Clare has taught American studies, women’s studies, women’s history and oral history in a range of FE, HE and community locations across the UK. Her work in community oral history involved supporting the community development of the BEME project in Wolverhampton as well as supporting oral history work in local museums and other community research projects. She has been the grant manager and an active researcher in two EU funded COST Actions: COST Action IS1405 and COST Action IS0907 which took an international focus on maternity care. She has been involved in the development and management of the international online survey of women’s birth experiences the Babies Born Better survey https://www.babiesbornbetter.org/ and is a member of the Steering Committee, project management team and UK national representative for the study. Marie-Clare has previously undertaken research on cross dressing, visual representations of HIV/AIDS and social and historical aspects of Menopause.

Marie-Clare’s current research focuses on maternity care and social support for marginalised women with a particular focus on forced migrant women’s experiences of maternity care and childbirth in the UK and Europe. Her doctoral work focused on social support, health inequalities and marginalisation exploring asylum seeking and refugee women’s experiences of perinatal social support using a feminist qualitative approach. Other work has been the development of an interdisciplinary project, Materiality, Memory, Motherhood and Migration, https://maternityresearch.cityofsanctuary.org/2025/01/22/materiality-memory-motherhood-and-migration-project-exhibition-2024 which explores the use of participatory and creative approaches in research with migrant women.