Dulce Morgado Neves:

Research, Mobility and Knowledge Transfer from ISCTE within the IPOV Project

The ISCTE researcher and member of the IPOV – Respectful Care project hosted the secondment carried out in Lisbon by María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas, from Diseño Social EN+ (Spain), a research stay focused on WP1, the development of the IPOV Platform and knowledge transfer within the framework of Horizon Europe MSCA Staff Exchanges.

During their research and knowledge-transfer stay in Lisbon, María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas, from Diseño Social EN+ (Spain), carried out a secondment at ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, an institution participating in IPOV – Respectful Care, a project developed within the framework of Horizon Europe – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Staff Exchanges.

The host of the secondment was Dulce Morgado Neves, a member of IPOV and researcher at ISCTE, the host institution for the secondment. Morgado Neves is a sociologist, coordinator of nascer.pt – Laboratory for Social Studies on Birth, and IPOV local coordinator at ISCTE.

It was precisely within this context of mobility, international collaboration and knowledge transfer that an interview with Dulce Morgado Neves was conducted to learn more about her professional and research background, the work of nascer.pt, ISCTE’s participation in IPOV, its experience as a host institution for secondments, and the research lines she intends to develop within the project.

A secondment focused on WP1 and the IPOV Platform

The work carried out by María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas during their stay in Lisbon focused particularly on Work Package 1 (WP1) and on the development of the IPOV Platform as a digital space designed to organise and disseminate knowledge, documents, visual resources, data and training materials related to obstetric violence and respectful maternity care.

The secondment coincided with the IPOV consortium meeting held in Lisbon on 22 and 23 June 2026, making it possible to connect the technical, editorial and communication work relating to the platform with the scientific and coordination activities undertaken by the project partners.

During these sessions, María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas supported the documentation of the meetings, the recording of interviews and the collection of photographs and audiovisual materials, while also coordinating with different consortium members to identify possible improvements related to content, accessibility, usability, structure and editorial processes within the IPOV Platform.

The stay also made it possible to develop activities with nascer.pt, including meetings with Dulce Morgado Neves, Mário JDS Santos and Catarina Barata to identify scientific resources, references, content and visual materials of potential interest for the platform.

It was within this framework that the interview with Dulce Morgado Neves was conducted, documenting not only her experience within the project but also the role played by ISCTE and nascer.pt in building an interdisciplinary and international perspective on birth.

Dulce Morgado Neves:
sociology, motherhood, parenthood and birth

Dulce Morgado Neves introduces herself as a sociologist and researcher at ISCTE, as well as coordinator of nascer.pt and a member of the IPOV project.

For several years, her research has addressed issues related to motherhood, parenthood and birth, always from an approach she describes as broad and multidimensional.

This perspective also underpins the work of nascer.pt, the Laboratory for Social Studies on Birth, a structure dedicated both to research and to the dissemination of knowledge about birth.

For Morgado Neves, understanding birth necessarily involves recognising its complexity and the different social, cultural, institutional and disciplinary dimensions involved in this process.

The fourth IPOV meeting at ISCTE and the first nascer.pt Forum

The interview took place after several days of intensive joint activity involving ISCTE, nascer.pt and IPOV.

On 22 and 23 June 2026, ISCTE hosted the fourth meeting of the IPOV project.

The presence in Lisbon of a large number of people interested in the study of birth led nascer.pt to take advantage of this opportunity to organise its first nascer.pt Forum, held immediately afterwards on 24 June.

According to Dulce Morgado Neves, the choice of date was deliberate. The organisers wanted to make the most of having so many people with shared scientific interests gathered in Lisbon and to encourage closer collaboration with IPOV members.

The Forum reflected the different areas of activity developed by nascer.pt. Although organised by its members, in keeping with the laboratory’s usual philosophy, it was not conceived as an exclusively internal event, but rather as a space open to a broader audience.

According to Morgado Neves, the participation of IPOV members brought considerable dynamism to the event.

Patrizia Quattrocchi as keynote speaker

One of the main contributions of the IPOV project to the Forum was the participation of Patrizia Quattrocchi, coordinator of IPOV, as a keynote speaker.

Her presentation focused on obstetric violence and the evolution of this concept over the last 30 years.

In the interview, Dulce Morgado Neves highlights Quattrocchi’s extensive experience and her status as a recognised expert in this field. Her presence in Lisbon for the consortium meeting made it possible to incorporate this scientific expertise into the programme of the first nascer.pt Forum.

The secondment of María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas subsequently made it possible to support the dissemination of the 1st nascer.pt Forum and prepare web and press content related to Patrizia Quattrocchi’s keynote, helping to transfer the knowledge shared during the event to the project’s communication and knowledge-transfer channels.

Scientific posters and methodological workshops

IPOV’s participation in the Forum was not limited to the keynote.

The event also included a call for scientific posters, with several IPOV members presenting work related to their respective research activities.

The final part of the Forum included methodological workshops, which also involved members of the project.

Among them was Serena Brigidi, a member of IPOV, who also personally facilitated one of the methodological workshops.

For Dulce Morgado Neves, the possibility of bringing the energy and dynamism generated around IPOV into the Forum was particularly positive. In the interview, she describes the collaboration between the two initiatives as mutually beneficial, a genuine “win-win” situation.

The choice of the Forum date had, from the outset, taken into account this opportunity to create a more collaborative activity together with IPOV members, recognising that the areas of work developed at ISCTE could also be relevant to those participating in the project.

Understanding birth from different perspectives

Another central element of the interview is the importance of bringing together professionals and researchers from different countries, institutions and disciplines.

For Morgado Neves, if the aim of nascer.pt is to better understand birth as a multidimensional process, it is also necessary to incorporate a diversity of perspectives from which the phenomenon can be approached.

The members of nascer.pt themselves come from different parts of the world, belong to different cultures and have very diverse disciplinary backgrounds.

In her view, this plurality contributes to a richer understanding of a field of study characterised by considerable cultural, geographical and social variation.

This is why it is so important to bring together different perspectives and ways of looking at birth, connecting people from different geographical, disciplinary and institutional contexts.

The international structure of IPOV further expands this possibility, enabling experiences and knowledge produced in very different contexts to be brought into dialogue.

The IPOV team at ISCTE

During the interview, Dulce Morgado Neves also explains how ISCTE’s participation in the project is structured.

The three IPOV researchers from ISCTE are:

Catarina Barata, Mário Santos and Dulce Morgado Neves.

Morgado Neves also serves as IPOV local coordinator at ISCTE.

There is also a very close relationship between nascer.pt and IPOV, as all three ISCTE members participating in IPOV are also members of nascer.pt.

According to the researcher, it was precisely their involvement in nascer.pt that subsequently led them to join the IPOV project, illustrating the similarities between the two initiatives and the many scientific interests they share.

This connection was also relevant during the secondment of María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas, who held meetings with Dulce Morgado Neves, Mário Santos and Catarina Barata to identify scientific resources, references and visual content that could contribute to the development of the IPOV Platform.

ISCTE as a host institution for secondments

An important part of ISCTE’s participation in IPOV concerns the hosting of secondments, mobility periods that are a fundamental component of Horizon Europe MSCA Staff Exchanges projects.

At the time of the interview, ISCTE had already hosted a considerable number of these mobility periods.

Moreover, the period with the highest concentration of secondments had coincided with the consortium meeting.

Morgado Neves explains that they had welcomed participants from Argentina and Spain and estimates that, during that month alone, ISCTE had hosted approximately five secondments.

It was therefore a particularly busy period for the team.

As a host institution, she explains, their aim is to receive participants in the best possible way by facilitating and promoting activities, sharing experiences and working together on the project.

This hosting role is directly reflected in the secondment of María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas: Dulce Morgado Neves acted as host for their stay at ISCTE, supporting this mobility within the IPOV project.

Mário Santos’ experience in Costa Rica

Mobility within the ISCTE team also works in the opposite direction.

At the time of the interview, Mário Santos had already completed his secondment.

His mobility had taken place in Costa Rica the previous year, and his work had focused mainly on the training of healthcare professionals in Costa Rica.

By contrast, Catarina Barata and Dulce Morgado Neves had not yet carried out their respective mobility periods.

Morgado Neves planned to undertake her secondment in early 2027, with a focus directly related to one of her main areas of scientific interest.

Obstetric violence and social movements

Within the IPOV project, Dulce Morgado Neves is particularly interested in researching obstetric violence from the perspective of the role played by social movements.

This is an area in which she had already begun working in the European context.

Her research starts from the development of a kind of historiography of social movements related to birth and rights during childbirth, as well as movements working against obstetric violence.

The international dimension of IPOV now gives her the opportunity to broaden this analysis.

The project is not limited to Europe but also connects with several Latin American countries, something Morgado Neves wants to use to build a bridge between the work she has already begun in Europe and the experiences developed in Latin America.

Social movements and advances in birth rights in Latin America

One of the issues she intends to analyse is the role played by social movements in advancing birth-related rights in Latin America.

As she explains in the interview, this will be one of her more personal areas of focus within IPOV.

The opportunity to work across different countries will make it possible to investigate how these processes have developed, identify similarities and differences, and understand how social movements have contributed to transforming debates and demands surrounding birth rights and obstetric violence.

The relationship with feminist movements

Within this research line, there is another issue of particular interest to Dulce Morgado Neves: the relationship between social movements connected with birth and obstetric violence and feminist movements.

The researcher wants to study and understand this relationship in greater depth.

Morgado Neves explicitly states that she begins from a working hypothesis rather than an established conclusion: she considers it likely that differences exist between countries.

The international comparison enabled by IPOV may contribute precisely to investigating these differences.

This issue is among the topics she expects to address during the IPOV secondment she plans to undertake in early 2027.

The knowledge generated through this mobility may subsequently contribute, as highlighted at the end of the interview, to incorporating new information and perspectives into the IPOV project.

From scientific knowledge to the IPOV Platform

The interview with Dulce Morgado Neves forms part of a broader programme of documentation, communication and knowledge-transfer activities undertaken during the secondment of María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas.

The stay provided an opportunity to work on how knowledge generated by project partners can be collected, organised, contextualised and disseminated through the IPOV Platform.

In addition to the interviews and the documentation of the consortium meeting and the nascer.pt Forum, the secondment included work on identifying scientific resources and references, preparing web and press content, and coordinating different communication activities.

These activities also included collaboration on the editing and communication of the Portuguese manifesto related to the recognition of obstetric violence in legislation, connecting the scientific, social and advocacy work developed in Portugal with the project’s communication activities.

Accessibility, user experience and platform sustainability

During the final phase of the secondment, further work was also undertaken to review the user experience of the IPOV Platform, analysing the organisation of resources, accessibility, usability and future maintenance needs.

Progress was also made on the development of internal guidelines, FAQs and editorial criteria, with the aim of supporting the coherent and sustainable management of the content and resources progressively incorporated into the platform.

This work reflects a conception of the IPOV Platform not simply as a website, but as a digital infrastructure capable of facilitating access to knowledge generated both within and beyond the project and supporting its transfer to researchers, professionals, institutions and other stakeholders interested in obstetric violence and respectful maternity care.

Secondments connecting research, communication, training and innovation

The experience developed in Lisbon illustrates the value of Horizon Europe MSCA Staff Exchanges secondments as instruments for fostering international and intersectoral collaboration.

The mobility of María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas, hosted by Dulce Morgado Neves at ISCTE, made it possible to connect different areas of work within the same process: research, communication, training, digital innovation, documentation and knowledge transfer.

At the same time, the experience described by Morgado Neves shows that this mobility dynamic works in multiple directions: ISCTE receives researchers from other countries, facilitates activities and spaces for collaboration, while its own researchers also undertake secondments at other institutions within the consortium.

From Mário Santos’ experience in Costa Rica to Dulce Morgado Neves’ future work on social movements in Europe and Latin America, these mobility periods make it possible to connect different contexts and generate new research questions.

The collaboration between IPOV, ISCTE and nascer.pt therefore illustrates how scientific meetings, secondments, posters, methodological workshops, interviews, training, communication and digital tools can form part of the same process of knowledge generation and transfer.

This is a particularly relevant approach for a field such as birth and obstetric violence which, as Dulce Morgado Neves emphasises, needs to be understood through a diversity of cultural, geographical, social, disciplinary and institutional perspectives.