Poster Competition Winner - IHA Conference 2026

Congratulations to Ifeoma Irene Njoku, winner of the Poster Competition at the IHA annual conference 2026 - Unsilencing Healthcare at South East Technological University.

Project: Intimate Entanglements: Designing & Reimagining Women's Health Technologies for Sensory Experience in Patient-Clinician Communication

Author(s): Ifeoma Irene Njoku & Camille Nadal

Bio: Ifeoma Irene Njoku is a PhD student in Computer Science at University College Dublin. Her research investigates patient–clinician communication in women’s health, focusing on how power, knowledge, and embodiment are negotiated during non-surgical procedures in reproductive, sexual, intimate and care. Drawing on feminist and intersectional frameworks, she explores how technologies for women’s health can be reimagined to support embodiment, vulnerability and patient agency, with an interest in inclusive, speculative, and soma design approaches. Dr Camille Nadal is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science at University College Dublin. Her research is at the intersection of health and technology design, with a particular interest for sensitive care contexts, including sexual and reproductive health.

Abstract: “It won’t hurt”, “You’ll just feel a little pressure”.
This type of language often accompanies non-surgical procedures involving reproductive, sexual, and intimate care, including cervical smears, IUD insertion, hysteroscopy, and colposcopy. Typically, these procedures are often portrayed as benign or painless on the basis that they do not require skin incisions. However, they often include penetration and considerable discomfort. The sensory reality of the patient’s body and the clinical framing of the procedure are at odds, which remains unexplored.

This research engages with themes of voice, power and silence, disobedient ethics, and crip/queer approaches to reimagining care and inclusion. This research explores the importance of sensory experience in patient-clinician communication, which is often overlooked. It examines the gap between communication and bodily sensations, emphasising how sensory experiences are minimised and verbally eliminated. This is explored through four interconnected areas: embodiment, touch, sense-making, and consent. Although touch plays a vital role as a means of communication, it can also be experienced as intrusive and disorienting. In this case, consent cannot be viewed as a singular event, but continuously formed through interaction.

Equally central is sense-making, patients often undertake the labour of attempting to interpret what happened after the procedure, questioning if their bodily reactions, pain and sensations were expected. This interpretive process is heavily tied to the silencing that occurs during such procedures, where there might not be the ability to vocalise their experiences. Drawing on feminist phenomenology alongside crip and queer theory, this research examines how the experience of pain is normalised and silenced through the notion of “non-invasiveness” that works unequally for different kinds of bodies based on their gender, disability and race. It conceptualises clinical encounters as an interaction through bodies in which sense-making does not occur merely through speech, but also through sensation, touch and affect.