Ms Martha Nicholson

Martha Nicholson is a PhD Candidate in Health, Wellbeing and Social Care in the Reproduction, Sexualities and Sexual Health resesearch group at the Open University, UK. Martha's collaborative PhD project is co-funded by the Grand Union Doctoral Training Pathway (GUDTP), an Economic and Social Research Council DTP, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

Martha is a mixed-methods researcher, employing ethnographic interviews, cross-sectional survey data and co-production workshops to explore abortion learning from the standpoint of nurses and midwives in Northern Ireland. Guided by Institutional Ethnography as her methodological framework, Martha's PhD project contributes to the research on nurses and midwives' roles in abortion care, on the influence of gender norms and religious affiliation on abortion care practices, and explores how centres of work and learning mediate the knowledge that nurses and midwives have access to following a change in abortion law. 

Before starting her PhD, Martha worked in research, monitoring and evaluation in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for non-governmental organisations MSI Reproductive Choices and IPPF. She evaluated abortion care training workshops, conducted formative research on community preferences for abortion care and developed results frameworks for monitoring and evaluating abortion care. Martha graduated with a Master's in Public Health from Karolinska Institutet in 2017.