Medical Humanities Research Centre at Glasgow announces new directorship

The Medical Humanities Research Centre (University of Glasgow) is pleased to announce a change in leadership and a new member of core staff. Dr Gavin Miller (Reader in Contemporary Literature and Medical Humanities), after twelve years of dedicated service, has now stepped down as lead director, and his co-director, Dr Megan Coyer (Senior Lecturer in English Literature), has taken up the role. Dr Manon Mathias (Reader in French) has been appointed as co-director. The MHRC is also delighted to welcome Dr Dieter Declercq as Lecturer in Medical Humanities (Narrative Medicine) within Film & TV Studies as a new integral part of the centre team from September 2024.

Photographs of Dr Megan Coyer (L) and Dr Manon Mathias (R) in front of a light grey background.
Posted on 18 Sep 2024, under News.

Webinar and Creative Work Launch: Imagining Better Futures of Health and Social Care with and for People with Energy Limiting Conditions (ELCs)

University of Liverpool’s Centre for Health Arts Society and Environment (CHASE) are delighted to invite you to a Zoom webinar launch for the creative work and findings from their project funded project by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): ‘Imagining Better Futures of Health and Social Care with and for People with Energy Limiting Conditions (ELC)’. This project is part of a series of projects on the future of health and social care, funded to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the NHS.

The project has involved a series of creative workshops for people of marginalised genders (women, trans men, non-binary, intersex and gender nonconforming people) who live with ELCs, with dedicated workshops for Muslim women and for LGBTQIA+ people. The workshops were facilitated by creative practitioners Khizra Ahmed, Khairani Barokka (Okka), Julian Gray, Mish Green and Louise Kenward. During the workshops participants were asked to imagine what better health care would be like for themselves as they age, and for people who will be diagnosed with ELC in the future. Participants and the creative practitioners have produced new work, including a podcast, comic book, zines, animation and creative writing. They also used learning from the creative workshops in discussions with healthcare practitioners and allied professionals. 

The webinar will launch these creative outputs and the policy recommendations from the work with healthcare practitioners.

The launch takes place on Wednesday July 17th 2-4pm via Zoom. Further information is available here.

Illustration of a screen with four people on an online call.

CHASE has a series of regular events called The Interdisciplinary Lab events. More information about these can be found on the CHASE Events site.

Posted on 01 Jul 2024, under Talks.

GMHN End of Year Reception

The Medical Humanities Research Centre (University of Glasgow) hosted an end of year networking and drinks reception for the Glasgow Medical Humanities Network on 12th June this year. The GMHN brings together and enhances medical humanities across universities and collections in the city of Glasgow and was established with the support of a Wellcome Trust grant in 2019. At the reception everyone enjoyed nine 5-minute lightning talks from network members on current or recently completed medical humanities research projects. The drinks reception that followed took place in the Anatomy Museum, and we were treated with a short talk from Dr Ourania Varsou (Lecturer in Anatomy) on the history of the museum and its collections. We hope to make this an annual event! 

New co-director, Manon Mathias, delivers her lightning talk.
New co-director, Manon Mathias, delivers her lightning talk.
Posted on 18 Jun 2024, under News.

Pioneering Health Equity: The Life & Medical Career of Dr Virginia M. Alexander

On the 11th March 2024, the University of Liverpool’s History Department hosted the annual Frances Ivens Lecture, where visiting Prof. Gamble examined the life of Dr. Virginia M. Alexander, an African-American physician-activist. One of Department’s students, Mollie Hynes, attended and gave an account of what she learnt.

In this year’s annual Frances Ivens Lecture, Professor Vanessa Northington Gamble offered invaluable insight into the career, achievements and challenges faced by Dr Virginia M. Alexander (1899-1949). The event was co-hosted by the Centre for Health, Arts, Society and Environment, the Centre for the Study of International Slavery, the Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems and the Department of History.

Photograph of Prof. Vanessa Gamble (middle) alongside four members of the Liverpool University History Department.
Prof. Vanessa Gamble is pictured in the middle, alongside members of the History Department.

The title of this lecture, “Pioneering Health Equity,” applies equally to Dr Gamble, a pioneer in the histories of race and racism in medicine and public health. Professor of Medical Humanities, Medicine, Health Policy and American Studies at George Washington University, she is currently writing the biography of Dr Virginia M. Alexander, a Black female physician and activist who worked to expose the discrimination and racism faced by Black patients and physicians in the American medical profession and healthcare system.

Personal Connections

In the decision to write Alexander’s biography, Dr Gamble noted a series of personal connections they shared. Looking past the similarity of their work as physicians, both Gamble and Alexander grew up in Philadelphia, and had spent time living in Washington DC and Alabama. Both were graduates of the University of Pennsylvania, it was here that Gamble’s mentor, Dr Helen Dickens, introduced her to the life of Alexander, who she had practiced with in 1935. The most convincing of these connections for Gamble to begin writing Alexander’s biography was the discovery that their ancestors had been enslaved in Mecklenburg County, Virginia.

Overcoming Individual Challenges

In the recognition of activism and individual activists, the personal challenges faced by those campaigning for broader, bigger structural changes often become obscured. This was a key theme that Dr Gamble highlighted in discussing the life of Alexander. In 1920, Alexander began her study at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she was the only Black American in her class. At this time, only 65 Black women physicians practiced across the United States. Facing discrimination from fellow students and professors throughout her higher education, Alexander’s activism began in 1924 as she led a protest to denounce the racism from a professor at the college. At her graduation in 1925, difficulties followed in finding an internship. Many hospitals did not accept Black interns and were particularly reluctant to accept female interns. Alexander eventually secured a position at Kansas City Hospital in Missouri, becoming the first female intern alongside her U. Penn classmate.

Aspiranto Health Home

In 1927, Alexander returned to Philadelphia and began to provide outpatient care in her home. This became Aspiranto Health Home in 1930, a practice primarily for maternity care and for the Black community of Philadelphia, who faced difficultly in finding healthcare. Aspiranto Health Home was a uniquely interracial practice, with over 2000 Black and white patients being treated by 1933. The importance of interracial relations to Alexander is clear in her activism, as she used her ties to Quakerism to gain support for her 1935 report on the health problems of North Philadelphia.

Opposing Racism in Medicine

The report by Alexander connected the social and political factors of inadequate housing, education, employment and healthcare for the Black population to the cause of her North Philadelphia neighbourhood’s health disparities. Widening these disparities was the racism faced by Black patients in hospitals and by Black physicians in their professions. Using Quakerism to gain white attention and support, Alexander’s influence meant the Race Relations Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a predominantly white group, attempted to address and oppose racism in medicine. Alexander recognised that action against racism in medicine was not restricted to the profession but hinged on political and religious support too. She advocated for health equity throughout her life and career, long before it was considered a national public health issue.

The event highlighted the activism of an inspirational Black female physician, whose contributions to tackling racism in medicine and public health are both under recognised and were ahead of her time. To find out more about the life and career of Dr Virginia M. Alexander, alongside the activism of other Black female physicians, below is some further reading.

Vanessa Northington Gamble, “Outstanding Services to Negro Health”: Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Dr. Virginia M. Alexander, and Black Women Physicians’ Public Health Activism,” American Journal of Public Health 106, no. 8 (August 1, 2016): pp. 1397-1404.

Posted on 01 May 2024, under Talks.

New publication announced: Corporeal Pedagogy: Visualizing Anatomy Through Art, Archaeology and Medicine

Newcastle Medical Humanities Network is thrilled to announced the latest published chapter by members Dr Olivia Turner and Dr Sally Waite, ‘Corporeal Pedagogy: Visualizing Anatomy Through Art, Archaeology, and Medicine’ in Graphic Medicine, Humanizing Healthcare and Novel Approaches in Anatomical Education. Biomedical Visualization, vol 3. Springer International.

Abstract

This chapter outlines the educational methodology, Corporeal Pedagogy established by Dr. Olivia Turner and Dr. Sally Waite, which uses the Shefton Collection of Greek Art and Archaeology for interdisciplinary teaching and learning. This methodology considers the relationship between objects, art, and medicine to better understand how we visualize and imagine the visceral body. It aims to create a form of learning and teaching that addresses and challenges certain conventional modes of Western education, particularly within a European university setting, and to instead facilitate embodied and haptic learning and production of knowledge. Corporeal Pedagogy explores ancient and contemporary notions of the body and embodiment, and how our perception of anatomy changes during experiences of transition, illness, and disease. The participating students used object handling, creative practice, meditation, and selected readings to investigate what it means to learn through the body. Within a university setting, the workshops illustrate the transformative role objects can play in education to facilitate radical forms of teaching and learning in the field of medical humanities.

Read here.

Cover image for "Graphic Medicine, Humanizing Healthcare and Novel Approaches in Anatomical Education" (white text on blue background).
Posted on 13 Mar 2024, under News.

The Suicide Cultures Podcast releases latest episode: Relating Suicide with Anne Whitehead

Newcastle Medical Humanities Network is thrilled to announced that The Suicide Cultures Podcast, Episode 3, featuring Anne Whitehead, is now live! Anne talks about her new book Relating Suicide: A Personal and Critical Perspective, published by Bloomsbury. Anne discusses how her process of writing the book and the period during which she was writing (the COVID-19 Pandemic) shaped the form and content of the book. Rebecca and Anne also talk about creativity and archives in relation to suicide.

Listen here.

The Suicide Cultures Podcast cover image. Featuring tree-covered mountains under a blue sky.
Posted on 26 Jan 2024, under News.

Fostering Interdisciplinarity and Creative Methods: Showcasing CHASE 

CHASE – the Centre for Health, Arts, Society and the Environment – provides an interdisciplinary platform at the University of Liverpool for collaborative research with a focus on health, medical and environmental concerns. On July 13th 2023, they hosted a welcome event that showcased examples of projects across the Centre.

Driven by the social sciences and humanities, CHASE, the Centre for Health, Arts, Society and the Environment, responds to a range of interconnected contemporary challenges related to health, medicine, environmental and climate change and the interactions between them – for examples: the complex histories of and social and creative responses to medicine, climate change and environmental contamination; the rise of environmentally induced (dis)ease; the persistence of chronic conditions and mental illness and creative responses to these; the significance of postcolonial feminist, disability and crip theories; the political economies and philosophies of wellbeing and health; the imperative of social justice and the politics and pragmatics of intervention and recovery.

Critical to their work as a Centre is genuine collaboration with communities of practice, people with lived experience of illness and degraded environments and various publics and activist communities across the city of Liverpool, the region and beyond. And central to their commitment to methodological creativity is the catalysing role of the arts: poetry, music, literature, film and creative and participatory arts.

On July 13th 2023 – they hosted a welcome event that showcased examples of projects across their three centre themes: Critical Medical Humanities; Arts, Mental Health and Wellbeing and Environmental Humanities, in addition to their cross faculty MA in Health, Cultures and Societies. The CHASE team introduced the work of three artists whose work is shaping new ways of researching mental health in the community (Philharmonic Cellist, Georgina Aasgaard); environmental histories (Environmental Artist, Byrony Benge-Abbot) as well as new ways of reconfiguring recovery (Award winning filmmaker Melanie Manchot).

The welcome event was well-attended across all three faculties at the University of Liverpool, in addition to non-academic partners in the City. Watch the introductory talk below or find out more by visiting the event website here.

CHASE Welcome Speech 2023

CHASE would like to thank all those who participated in the day, and who attended their interdisciplinary workshop on objects – Things Provocations – as an heuristic for interdisciplinary working.

For further information, please contact Dr Jacqueline Waldock.

To join the mailing list, please email  with the subject: chase first_name second_name

Posted on 21 Oct 2023, under News.

Lucy Carolan shortlisted for The Prescription Prize in Creative Writing 2023

Lucy Carolan, Fine Art PhD Researcher at Newcastle University, has been shortlisted for The Prescription Prize in Creative Writing 2023, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

A strong field of competition entries came in from writers across the UK in prose, poetry and hybrid writing. All entrants are to be congratulated on the breadth of their engagement with creative writing on the medical humanities and the RCPSG collections.

You can find out more here.

Old-fashioned medicine bottle with the text 'the prescription: Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow' written on a yellowing label.
Posted on 29 Sep 2023, under News.

What can wellbeing and health research look like in the arts, humanities and social sciences?

The NNMHR are delighted to share the programme for partner institution Lancaster University’s upcoming online symposium “What can wellbeing and health research look like in the arts, humanities and social sciences?”, due to take place on 22 and 23 May 2023. The symposium is organised by Lancaster’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Health Hub.

Keynote speakers will be Professor Angela Woods (Durham University) and Dr Alex Wragge-Morley (History Department, Lancaster). The full programme can be viewed below, and registration is via Eventbrite.

Posted on 09 May 2023, under News.

NNMHR Congress 2023: Keynote Speakers

FIRST KEYNOTE

Chisomo Kalinga

On citizenship, boundaries and belonging: Designing Inclusive Medical and Health Humanities Spaces

April 19, 12-1:30PM BST

As the medical humanities field continues to expand and flourish within innovative spaces of health research, critical questions emerge about who belongs in that space, who gets to build and sustain it, and who gets to be a citizen. 

This keynote argues that the medical and health humanities as a field and discipline are at key crossroads necessitating a reflection on citizenship and belonging, particularly amongst those on the margins, and advocates a self-reflection on the realities of inclusion, exclusion, power and resistance within the field. This talk puts into perspective how method, praxis, analysis, pedagogy, cosmology, and epistemology must align with the most marginalized in our spaces and practice. As we ruminate the realities of where the medical humanities is actively positioned at the moment in the wake of ongoing calls for global social and reparative justice, we must examine where the critical health and medical humanities sits within this discourse. Does this inter-multi-transdisicplinary engagement with medicine, health, bodies, people, culture, and society reflect the real and imagined productions from the people existing within these spaces? Are we doing enough as academics, researchers, activists, healthcare workers or creative practitioners to understand these spaces we claim to research and serve? If not, how do we actively challenge ourselves to redirect the field towards genuine inclusivity and, more importantly, dismantle systems of dominance and discrimination at this critical juncture when calls for greater ethical practice, transparency and civic responsibility in our research practice are met with resistance.

About Chisomo: Dr Kalinga is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh. Her research engages how modern and traditional literary practices (performance, form and aesthetics) are constructed by ordinary people in narratives of health and wellbeing. Her research interests are disease (specifically sexually transmitted infections), illness and wellbeing, biomedicine, and traditional healing. She is currently collaborating with her colleagues across Malawi and Southern Africa to support the Malawi Medical Humanities Network (MMHN) and the South-Africa based Medical and Health Humanities Network Africa.

SECOND KEYNOTE:

Nils Fietje and Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya

Global health policy and the critical medical humanities: pasts, presents and futures

April 20, 12-1:30PM BST

What is at stake when scholarship seeks to directly influence global health policy? Nils Fietje (WHO Regional Office for Europe) and Sanjoy Bhattacharya (Professor of Medical and Global Health Histories, University of Leeds) discuss organisational cultures and the intersections of history and theory with contemporary policy and practice.

Nils Fietje – Technical Officer, WHO Regional Office for Europe 

Sharpening the double-edged sword: the role of the medical humanities in global public health policy making

Over the past ten years, the ‘critical turn’ within medical humanities has done much to challenge and complement our understanding of medicine and the practices of health care. But to what extent have the medical humanities directly influenced health policy? Is there a seat at the policy making table for research from the field? Or is this even desirable? This talk will explore why the double-edged sword of actively contributing to global health governance might be worth wielding; and how one might go about sharpening the other edge.

About Nils: Nils Fietje is a Technical Officer within the Behavioural and Cultural Insights Unit at the WHO Regional Office for Europe. He has a background in English literature and the cultural history of medicine. As part of the BCI Unit, he is leading efforts to understand how cultural contexts affect and interact with health and well-being, across the life-course and throughout the continuum of care. Recently, this work has included a particular focus on arts and health, having published the first-ever WHO report on the evidence base for arts and health interventions.

Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya – Professor of Medical and Global Health Histories, University of Leeds

Who needs to learn from WHO(m), and how?: Revisiting cultures of global health theory and practice

Global Health has different stages, involving very different actors, as well as political, social, economic and, not least, cultural frameworks. There has been a tendency in historical work to focus on offices based in Europe and North America, based on presumptions about the epistemic, economic and political primacy of the thoughts and actions within such contexts. This scholarship draws upon – and fortifies – exclusionary ideas of racial and cultural superiority that are widespread. They generally minimise the complexities of implementation and the important roles played by low and middle income country actors, who often choose not to communicate in English. So, when these voices are identified carefully and considered respectfully, what do they teach us? That culturally competent and adaptable implementation of grand ideas developed elsewhere is more important, than some exclusionary and racially superior notion of one group knowing better than others and the related wisdom of ‘nudging’ behavioural change? This talk proposes humility as a core need and strength in organisational culture, in norm making and implementation.

About Sanjoy: Sanjoy is the permanent Head of the School of History at the University of Leeds, and also the Professor of Medical and Global Health Histories. He continues to work on a decolonised history of the World Health Organisation since its inception, even as he continues to work with multiple WHO Departments and Divisions around the world, usually in partnership with regional and national governance.

THIRD KEYNOTE

Dr Ayesha Ahmad, Professor Jeremy Greene, Professor Patricia Kingori, Professor Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, Professor Stuart Murray, Dr Will Viney and Professor Jo Winning

‘Critical’: What next for medical humanities?

April 21, 12-1:30PM BST

A plenary roundtable chaired by Prof Angela Woods brings seven leading scholars together to reflect upon the past, present and future of medical humanities.

The 2023 Congress marks a decade since the ‘critical’ turn in medical humanities. This plenary roundtable reflects upon the significance and impact of this ‘critical’ turn, with an emphasis on the most important issues – thematic, methodological, structural – facing the field today. To set the scene for discussion each speaker will offer a short provocation about the past, present or future of medical humanities.

The provocations:

Will Viney: The critical value of projects in the medical humanities – projects are often created to solve problems, but what problems do they create?

Jeremy Greene: *Medical humanities* is a capacious term that is generally nonthreatening and can contain within it a diverse set of programs with entirely orthogonal social or political purposes, ranging from radical revisionings of the social order to reactionary and revanchist uses of nostalgia. In focusing our attention to a tighter beam, what are the *critical medical humanities* critical of, and who are they critical for?

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi: Medical humanities in Africa – critical, urgent or out of touch?

Ayesha Ahmad: Global Health Humanities is an act of creation. Such an act is symbolic when situating storytelling in contexts of suffering. In particular, I argue that creating stories in suffering is a mode of resistance and addresses silence in situations of silencing. To this end, storytelling is a saviour of suffering.

Stuart Murray: Both Medical Humanities and Disability Studies have experienced critical turns, but where these leave the relationship between the two remains unclear. I want to argue that both have under-acknowledged limitations as critical fields, but that the current working methods of each are well placed to critique the other, highlighting their shortcomings and speaking to some of the consequences that have come from their relative success as emerging academic disciplines.

Jo Winning: In early March 2023, the UK government announced its plans to make the UK a ‘Science and Technology Superpower’ by 2030 [https://www.gov.uk/government/news/plan-to-forge-a-better-britain-through-science-and-technology-unveiled] – critical medical humanities have a crucial role to play in any such plans, and must refuse the exclusion of the humanities.

Patricia Kingori: Fixations of endings in global health are a violence to which the medical humanities must pay greater attention.

Register now for NNMHR Congress 2023, 19-21 April:

Register now for CRITICAL
Posted on 14 Apr 2023, under News.