Maria Velo Higueras is a midwifery lecturer and PhD candidate at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen (Scotland, UK). She qualified as a midwife in Spain in 2013 and shortly after she moved to the United Kingdom where she has developed most of her professional career. She has worked in different clinical settings across West London, working in both hospital and community, supporting homebirths and providing team-based continuity of care. Since 2018, she she has contributed to the improvement of maternity services by educating future midwives in the values of feminist, woman/person-centred care and autonomous midwifery practice.
Maria also holds other postgraduate qualifications in Gender Based Violence and Sexology and Gender, that have influenced the feminist values and human right approach to her Midwifery practice. Outside of her professional profile, Maria is also a mother of two young children. Including this in her professional profile, she aims to vindicate and make visible this important social task that is often unpaid and socially underappreciated, and that hugely influences women’s professional work, lives and careers.
Her current PhD study is exploring UK midwives’ attitudes and experiences of freebirth. Her presentation at the VIDM will discuss the findings of her systematic qualitative evidence synthesis exploring women’s motivations and experiences of freebirth.
