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Fully funded PhD studentship (UK Home students) based at Manchester Metropolitan University Supervisors: Professor Alison Pilnick (MMU), Dr Rebecca O’Brien (Notts Healthcare Trust), Dr Sarah Campbell (MMU) ‘Too much touch?’: Enabling a better understanding of the use of touch in dementia care. Healthcare practitioners (doctors, nurses, therapists, their assistants and students) regularly touch patients with dementia when delivering healthcare. A distinction has been made in the healthcare literature between ‘necessary’ touch (for example dressing a wound or examining a patient) and ‘non-necessary’ touch (for example holding a patient’s hand or putting a hand on their shoulder). Whist this ‘non-necessary’ touch occurs regularly in dementia care, it is less commonly seen in other healthcare settings. However, the distinction between ‘necessary’ and ‘unnecessary’ touch may be an oversimplification as we do not understand what interactional purpose touch serves in this context. This project will use the sociological method of conversation analysis to examine the use of touch as it occurs between patients and staff on acute Healthcare of the Older Person hospital wards. Analysis will begin with an existing corpus of video recorded data, but the successful candidate will also collect and analyse new data to supplement this. The project aims to provide a more detailed contribution to the empirical basis for delivering dementia care; and to develop a training resource for staff grounded in this empirical research. Start date: October 2025. Fees plus an annual stipend will be paid at the UKRI rate (£19,237 for 2024-25, subject to a small annual uplift). More details and how to apply can be found here (closing date for applications 14th March): https://www.mmu.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research-study/phd/funding/scholarships Informal enquiries welcome to Alison: a.pilnick@mmu.ac.uk