Reflective videos by early-stage researchers

Ilaria Mariani’s secondment at Universitat Rovira i Virgili

As part of the public deliverable Production of reflective videos by early-stage researchers during secondments, IPOV – RESPECTFUL CARE presents this short reflective video featuring Ilaria Mariani, midwife and researcher at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Maternal and Child Health at IRCCS Burlo Garofolo in Trieste, Italy.

The video documents Ilaria Mariani’s secondment at Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) in Tarragona, Spain, within the framework of the European project IPOV – RESPECTFUL CARE, funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Staff Exchanges programme.

This audiovisual output forms part of the project’s commitment to documenting training, mobility and knowledge-exchange activities developed across the consortium. It contributes to Work Package 2 – Documents and Data, led by the University of Udine, and reflects the role of secondments as spaces for professional development, interdisciplinary learning and international collaboration.

A secondment focused on interdisciplinary learning and respectful care

Through her testimony, Ilaria Mariani reflects on her participation in IPOV – RESPECTFUL CARE as an opportunity for training and professional growth. The project addresses respectful care and obstetric violence as complex issues connected to rights, dignity, health, professional competencies, healthcare training and the sociocultural systems in which maternity care takes place.

Her reflection underlines that obstetric violence cannot be understood from a single disciplinary perspective. It requires dialogue between different fields of knowledge, institutions, healthcare systems and cultural contexts. In this sense, the secondment experience offered Ilaria the opportunity to engage with an international and multidisciplinary research environment.

As she explains in the video, IPOV allowed her to work alongside people from different countries and areas of expertise, including midwives, doctors, researchers, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and public health experts. This exchange enabled her to observe the same phenomenon through new international and multidisciplinary lenses.

Learning across disciplines, countries and healthcare systems

Ilaria Mariani’s testimony highlights how secondments can create spaces for comparison, reflection and shared learning across different healthcare systems and research cultures.

Through IPOV, she had the opportunity to engage with healthcare systems and cultural contexts different from her own. Observing how other countries organise maternity care, what policies they have adopted to promote respectful care, what challenges they face and what interventions are being implemented allowed her to broaden her perspective and deepen her understanding of the issue.

The video shows how this kind of exchange can generate meaningful discussions about what can be improved, and how, in each context. These conversations are essential in a project such as IPOV – RESPECTFUL CARE, where the aim is not only to produce knowledge, but also to create conditions for dialogue, comparison and transformation.

Her reflection also points to one of the central contributions of MSCA Staff Exchanges: the creation of a cohesive scientific community capable of addressing shared challenges through exchange, consensus and evidence.

Professional development and methodological growth

The video also illustrates the value of secondments as experiences of professional development. Ilaria explains that her participation in IPOV allowed her to become familiar with new methodological tools, learn research approaches she had not previously known, and gain access to clinical and academic contexts that enriched her both technically and personally.

This dimension is particularly relevant within the framework of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Staff Exchanges programme, where mobility is understood not only as movement between institutions and countries, but also as a process of acquiring new skills, strengthening research capacities and circulating knowledge beyond national borders.

Ilaria’s experience shows how secondments can contribute to the development of methodological, clinical and academic perspectives. It also highlights the importance of connecting professional practice with research, and of creating opportunities for early-stage researchers to participate in international environments where different forms of expertise can meet and inform each other.

Transferable skills and intercultural collaboration

A central element of Ilaria Mariani’s testimony is the importance of transferable skills. She emphasises that some of the most valuable skills developed through a secondment are not always visible in formal academic or professional records, but are essential in international research and collaborative work.

These include the ability to communicate in another language in a professional context, work within a multicultural team, negotiate meanings and build a common language among people who come from different academic, professional and cultural backgrounds.

This reflection is closely aligned with the objectives of MSCA Staff Exchanges, which support not only research collaboration, but also the development of professional competencies, intercultural communication, career-building opportunities and knowledge circulation across borders.

In the context of IPOV – RESPECTFUL CARE, these transferable skills are especially important because the project brings together disciplines, institutions and perspectives that may use different concepts, methods and professional languages. Building a shared understanding is therefore part of the scientific and institutional work of the project.

Building networks for future collaboration

Beyond the formal training and research dimensions, Ilaria’s testimony highlights the human and professional networks created through IPOV. She describes these relationships as one of the most valuable outcomes of the experience, even if they are more difficult to measure.

The video points to the long-term value of these connections: future collaborations, publications, new ideas and conversations that can continue beyond the duration of the project. This dimension is central to the spirit of MSCA Staff Exchanges, which aim to strengthen sustainable collaboration between institutions and people working in research and innovation.

For IPOV – RESPECTFUL CARE, these networks are not secondary outcomes. They are part of the project’s capacity to build an international community committed to the recognition, analysis and prevention of obstetric violence, and to the promotion of respectful maternity care across different contexts.

Making obstetric violence visible

Another key contribution of Ilaria Mariani’s reflection is the importance of visibility. She stresses that obstetric violence remains insufficiently recognised and that naming it is a necessary first step towards acknowledging the problem and breaking the cycle of violence.

In her testimony, Ilaria underlines that a European consortium such as IPOV has the capacity to amplify this issue and bring it into institutions, healthcare practices, professional training and public debate. This is one of the broader objectives of the project: to support the recognition of obstetric violence as a matter that requires research, institutional attention, professional reflection and collective responsibility.

The video therefore contributes to IPOV’s wider mission of creating spaces where obstetric violence can be discussed rigorously and openly, and where respectful maternity care can be promoted through evidence, dialogue and collaboration.

A testimony of collaboration, urgency and shared responsibility

On a personal level, Ilaria Mariani explains that the project has renewed her awareness that work on respectful care is meaningful, urgent and collective. Her reflection emphasises that this work cannot be carried out in isolation. It requires collaboration across borders, disciplines and perspectives.

The final message of her testimony is closely connected to the ethical and practical aims of IPOV – RESPECTFUL CARE: to contribute to maternity care in which every woman, wherever she is, can live her childbirth experience feeling heard, respected and safe.

Ilaria Mariani’s video therefore contributes to the wider narrative of the reflective video series. It documents not only a secondment experience, but also the professional growth, methodological learning, intercultural exchange, human connections and shared commitment that make international collaboration meaningful within a Horizon Europe MSCA Staff Exchanges project.

About the video

Researcher: Ilaria Mariani
Sending institution: WHO Collaborating Centre for Maternal and Child Health at IRCCS Burlo Garofolo, Trieste, Italy
Host institution: Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain
Project: IPOV – RESPECTFUL CARE
Programme: Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Staff Exchanges
Grant Agreement No.: 101130141
Work package: Work Package 2 – Documents and Data
Work package lead: University of Udine
Deliverable: Production of reflective videos by early-stage researchers during secondments
Format: Reflective video
Main topics: respectful care, obstetric violence, interdisciplinary research, professional training, healthcare systems, transferable skills, international collaboration, knowledge exchange

Licence

This video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), unless otherwise stated.

This means that the video may be shared with appropriate attribution, but it may not be used for commercial purposes or modified, remixed, transformed or redistributed as a derivative work without prior authorisation.

EU funding acknowledgement and disclaimer

Funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Staff Exchanges programme, Grant Agreement No. 101130141.

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

PRODUCTION OF REFLECTIVE VIDEOS BY EARLY-STAGE RESEARCHERS DURING SECONDMENTS