The 2023 round of the New Networks in Critical Medical Humanities Scheme is now open!

Background

In 2022, The Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research (NNMHR) launched the first round of the New Networks in Critical Medical Humanities Funding Scheme. Four networks were awarded funds of up to £2500 each to support events, activities and the development of resources. 

The networks selected for funding in the 2022 round were:

The NNMHR has a strong national and international reputation as an interdisciplinary hub for researchers, practitioners and artists working in the critical medical humanities. Through a dynamic programme of events for early career researchers, and congresses held at Durham, Leeds, Sheffield and online in 2021, the NNMHR has been successful in engaging over two thousand researchers at all career stages and from all the disciplines contributing to the field. Collaboration and moving across disciplinary boundaries is increasingly important to generating new frameworks, scholarship and practices within critical medical humanities research. 

Shifting the focus from small research projects and individual fellowships, the New Networks in Critical Medical Humanities Funding Scheme enables the NNMHR to identify and support emerging networks of researchers committed to the innovative development, complication and expansion of the field. These networks will involve early career researchers in leading or coordinating roles, and will help catalyse new ideas, methodologies, collaborations and areas of further investigation within the critical medical humanities, nationally and internationally. We welcome proposals for new networks as well as applications from established networks seeking to support new activities or initiatives.

The New Networks in Critical Medical Humanities Funding Scheme is made possible by a Discretionary Award from Wellcome Trust [UNS128916].


Prospective applicants for the 2023 round may be interested in the online event “What Makes a Good Research Network?” on 26th April 2023, 14.00 to 15.30.


Details of the 2023 round

For the 2023 round, the NNMHR invites applications for grants of up to £2500 to support networking activities for up to two years (2023-2025). All awarded funds must be claimed and spent by the end of August 2025. 

Costed networking activity may include, but is not limited to:

  • collaboration events and activities of core network members (including travel)
  • collaboration and scoping events with relevant stakeholders 
  • scholarly outreach and public engagement initiatives 
  • core resources for collaborative research activity (including technological resources)
  • costs associated with plenary speakers or keynote events
  • costs associated with any publications emerging from the network in the duration of the award
  • Staffing costs in the form of stipends or hourly payments for unwaged or precarious workers including but not necessarily limited to artists, activists, representatives from charities or similar organisations. If the ECR network leader named on the grant is not currently in full-time paid employment, funds may be requested to support their salary costs (on an hourly paid or fractional basis) for time spent coordinating network activities. Hourly paid staffing costs must be administered by the host institution in line with their own policies around casual employment. If the ECR network leader named on the grant is not currently in full-time paid employment, funds may be requested to support their salary costs (on an hourly paid or fractional basis) for time spent coordinating network activities. Salary costs must be administered by the host institution in line with their own policies around casual employment.

Costs that are not eligible for funding include:

  • teaching buy-outs, fellowships, or personal payments for individual or group research time
  • technology and computing resources for individual use 

Prospective applicants will be able to attend an online workshop to explore what makes a successful research network, to reflect upon the benefits and limitations of online working, to address barriers to access, and to share best practice. 

The NNMHR will support successful applicants by offering them mentoring, helping them to establish the public profile of their network, and inviting them to showcase the activities of their network at the annual NNMHR congresses and through regular contributions to The Polyphony. The NNMHR will provide regular informal opportunities for the individuals running critical medical humanities networks to share their experiences and ideas, reflect on what is working and what is not, and identify areas of synergy and potential collaboration. 

The NNMHR will agree with successful applicants an approach to evaluation prior to the commencement of funded activity. As they will engage and develop different constituencies and intellectual agendas, networks require space to experiment, as well as flexibility in the definition of what counts as ‘success’.

Administration of the Award

At least one applicant within the proposed network must be affiliated to an institution willing to administer the grant. Contact details for this applicant (if someone other than the lead author) and their institution, as well as a brief letter of support from their institution confirming that they are willing to administer the award as detailed below, must be provided.

The administering institution must be able to bear the cost associated with the grant in the first instance; requests for reimbursement of costs will be made to Durham University (representing the NNMHR) on a quarterly basis, with evidence of spend in arrears. Any unspent funds will remain with the NNMHR. Please note that the NNMHR are not in a position to dispense this grant as a lump sum upfront. 

Eligibility

Applicants can come from any discipline or sector engaged in critical medical humanities research, working anywhere in the world. Applications will only be considered from groups of two or more individuals working collaboratively. In order to ensure that the network supports the career development of its coordinators, at least one applicant in this group must regard themselves as being early career (broadly defined as not having yet taken up a permanent post). 

While a focus on critical medical humanities research is essential, the scheme recognises that research takes place in spaces beyond the academy and can be carried out within a wide range of professional, artistic and community contexts. Applications from researchers from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities and from people who identify as disabled or who have lived experience of illness will be strongly encouraged. 

Assessment Criteria

Applicants will be free to determine the nature and scope of network activity within the Wellcome Trust’s overall guidelines, and can use funds to cover the costs of network coordination. It will not be a requirement that networks generate discrete research outputs or applications for further funding; however, applicants must be able to identify some broader goals for the network beyond simply exchanging ideas, and to show how participation will benefit those involved in the network’s coordination and activity. 

Applications will be assessed against the extent to which they:

  • further a critical medical humanities approach to health-related research
  • have the potential to impact positively on the people engaged, whatever their background, role, profession, status or career level
  • involve early career researchers in coordinating or leading roles
  • take intellectual risks or propose experimental ways of working
  • are committed to inclusivity and have identified strategies to achieve this
  • embrace interdisciplinarity as part of their approach to their chosen theme/s
  • address the sustainability of the proposed collaboration and/or the topic at hand beyond the life of the grant (this could take a number of forms including ECR career development, or how the network might exist or evolve in the future)

Applications will be assessed by a panel made up of members of the NNMHR Steering group.

Please note:

  • While we will take into account matters like representation and diversity among the people and topics involved, the actual size of your network is not included in the assessment criteria. This is intentional. We want to see the best and most innovative ideas that the critical medical humanities have to offer. These might involve any number of people from any location/s in the world. Key questions addressed by these networks can impact local through to global settings and contexts, the most important thing is bringing the right people together to do that. Interdisciplinarity matters, but how you achieve this is up to you.
  • Networks can work to broad or narrow themes: what matters is the furthering of knowledge and practice around approaches to thinking about health.
  • The aims of individual networks might include the production of scholarly outputs but this is not essential. We are interested in bringing together new communities of thought and practice and how you seek to address issues within the field of critical medical humanities is up to you. We are happy to consider all types of activity that might positively impact the field.

Application Process

Applicants should send their completed application form and institutional letter of support by 5pm (UK time) on Friday 12th May 2023 to Dr James Rákóczi at 

The institutional letter of support is to confirm that the institution is willing and able to bear the cost associated with the grant in the first instance; requests for reimbursement of costs will be made to Durham University (representing the NNMHR) on a quarterly basis, with evidence of spend in arrears.

The NNHMR Steering Group will review the applications and aim to notify all applicants of the outcome by the end of June 2023. 

As described in Wellcome Trust’s Grant Conditions it is important to note that:

  • NNMHR requires that all funded networks comply with the legal, ethical and risk-based processes of the institution administrating the grant. NNMHR also reserves the right to refuse any expenditure or event that does not meet adequate health and safety or ethical compliance standards
  • Grant holders must inform NNMHR if planned activities and/or expenditure needs to change significantly within the duration of the award
  • Any unspent funding will remain with the NNMHR at the end of the grant period.

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Frequently asked questions:

How much are the awards?

Each award is for up to £2500.

How many awards will be made? 

We are likely to make four or five awards in this round. 

Our network was awarded funding in the 2022 round. Can we apply again for more funding to develop our network further? 

No, we have decided to prioritise funding a wider selection of networks rather than give additional funds to networks that have already received support from the NNMHR.

We applied for an award in the last round, but were unsuccessful. Can we apply again? 

Yes!

How will the award be made? 

At least one applicant within the proposed network must be affiliated to an institution willing to administer the grant. Contact details for this applicant (if someone other than the lead author) and their institution, as well as a brief letter of support from their institution confirming that they are willing to administer the award as detailed below, must be provided.

The administering institution must be able to bear the cost associated with the grant in the first instance; requests for reimbursement of costs will be made to Durham University (representing the NNMHR) on a quarterly basis, with evidence of spend in arrears. Any unspent funds will remain with the NNMHR. Please note that the NNMHR are not in a position to dispense this grant as a lump sum upfront. 

I’m not quite ready to apply for this funding yet. Will there be another opportunity to apply for new network funding in the future?

We are unlikely to be able to offer further rounds of funding after 2023. 

Further Information: For informal enquiries or advice about your eligibility for the scheme, please contact Dr James Rákóczi at .

Posted on 03 Mar 2023, under News.

Four new NNMHR-funded Critical Medical Humanities Networks

The Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research is delighted to announce four new awards made under our first round of the New Networks in Critical Medical Humanities Funding Scheme.

This scheme attracted a high volume of quality applications: the originality, creativity and intellectual rigour demonstrated by all network proposals point towards an exciting future for critical medical humanities research. A call for a second round of proposals will be issued in early 2023.

The four successful networks will individually launch, or (as some of the networks are expansions of pre-existing projects) re-launch, over this month. Each represents innovative and incisive new directions for the critical medical humanities. All are led by non-hierarchical teams with members at differing stages of their academic careers.

If you are interested in getting involved in any of these networks, then do get in touch. You can do this by messaging NNMHR Network Coordinator Dr James Rákóczi who will happily forward you to the correct network. Or, of course, you can message the individual leads on each network project. Over to you NNMHR networks!

Broadly Conceived

  • Kate Errington
  • Jemma Walton

Broadly Conceived is a critical medical humanities network of postgraduate students and early career researchers interested in any aspect of reproduction. Established by PhD students Kate Errington (Birkbeck & London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and Jemma Walton (Birkbeck) in October 2021, the network has a blog, Twitter account, and holds monthly online ‘book club’ meetings. Kate and Jemma have already organised a number of other initiatives under the Broadly Conceived banner, including interviewing author Laura Dockrill about her experiences of postpartum psychosis for Birkbeck Arts Week 2022, and hosting an online tour of the Birth Rites Collection with curator Helen Knowles. Broadly Conceived aims to establish a supportive community of repro-researchers as they embark on their scholarly careers, which will enable members to thrive both within and beyond the university.

Ends of Knowledge: Critical University Studies and the Medical Humanities

  • Dr Harriet Cooper
  • Dr James Rákóczi

Ends of Knowledge is a research network that brings working knowledges from the medical humanities into dialogue with critical university studies. What does it mean to be a practitioner of the critical medical humanities in an era of geopolitical instability, entrenched inequality, and impending climate breakdown? What forms of knowledge can the critical medical humanities produce within university-systems structured by crisis managerialisms and uncaring, unending metrics of evaluation? What kinds of relationship to power and to health are assumed through the invocation of critique and what kinds of social and political agency do academics invested in the critical medical humanities have? The Ends of Knowledge network brings together a community of practitioners loosely identified (or dis-identified) with the (critical) medical humanities. It seeks to think-with, to remain alive to the possibilities of, and to retain agency within, the junctures of the present academy and world. By re-describing medical humanities practices through the material conditions that structure the contemporary academy, it will be committed to addressing challenging questions about the meaning and location of critique, intervention, knowledge-production, and much more — especially as it relates to health-related research and activism. Check out our website, see our upcoming events, join our mailing list, and follow us on Twitter at @EndsKnowledge.

Neurodivergent Humanities

  • Dr Louise Creechan
  • Dr Louise Creechan
  • Dr Ria Cheyne
  • Dr Arya Thampuran
  • Dr Leni van Goidsenhoven
  • Sarinah O’Donoghue
  • Alice Hagopian

The Neurodivergent Humanities network will be a safe and generative space that accommodates the diverse, individual needs of scholars working in the humanities, while offering a shared sense of community and support. We will explore and pilot new modes of thinking, being, and doing research in ways that better support our needs, within and beyond institutional structures and practices. The research model we develop will reject the prevailing deficit model in neurodivergence discourse; we seek to reframe best practices as teaching, learning, and research methods that can best support the diverse needs and skills within our community in an academic environment. The network will develop an online hub to share resources, where we can consolidate our experiences of what has worked (and not worked!) in the academic spaces we have encountered, and ultimately create a more hospitable space for us to undertake our research. We will also run regular roundtable workshops to bring together scholars from different fields, to brainstorm collaboratively about better access and practices in academic spaces. Our learnings will eventually feed into a ‘manifesto on the move’, a living, co-produced document of best practices for engaging with research and supporting neurodivergence – both academically and pastorally. To sustain these connections, we will also develop a mentorship model to support one another, one that is aligned with our collaborative, non-hierarchical ethos.

Nonhuman Animals in the Medical Humanities Network (NAMHN)

  • Dr Vanessa Ashall
  • Dr Camille Bellet
  • Dr Bentley Crudgington
  • Dr Eva Haifa Giraud
  • Dr Renelle McGlacken

The Nonhuman Animals in the Medical Humanities Network (NAMHN) is a transdisciplinary research network that brings knowledges and practices from the medical humanities into conversation with animal studies. What would a science of the medical humanities in which the inclusion of nonhuman animals is no longer just a matter of multispecies care and medicine for humans, but also for nonhuman animals look like? What theoretical and methodological approaches would such a science require? Our goal is to bring together scholars from diverse disciplines, artists, writers, practitioners, and activists to rethink and revive the role of nonhuman animals in the medical humanities. We will create an exchange platform in which all interested members can participate freely and easily. Blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, or many other audio-visual creations stimulating dialogue and reflection will be regularly published there to promote new ways of thinking about and listening to nonhuman animals in the Medical Humanities. We will organise four creative workshops over the next two years, around key themes not yet defined, but chosen in collaboration with network leaders and academic and non-academic partners to give participants the opportunity to think outside the box and challenge both their knowledges and practices. A closing online exhibition inspired by these exchanges will be prepared and staged on the website at the end of 2024 to open the NAMH community to new horizons. We aim to make everyone here feel welcome, valued, supported to develop new scientific visions, innovative and ground-breaking academic networks, and find collaborative writing opportunities!

Posted on 05 Sep 2022, under News.

ECR Development Opportunity: NNMHR / Wellcome Trust Discretionary Award

The NNMHR call for expressions of interest from ECRs to collaborate on the development of an exciting new project intended to support ECRs from across the Northern Network to engage creatively with the Wellcome Collection’s extensive holdings.

The chosen team will devise a programme of activities to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue around the Collection and support innovative modes of exploration and use, with a focus on research and public engagement. This programme will form the basis of an application for a Wellcome Trust Discretionary Award, for which the NNMHR has been invited to apply. The project will be led by Fiona Johnstone (Durham/ The Polyphony), with support from the NNMHR steering group, and the administrative assistance of Durham Institute for Medical Humanities. 4-6 ECRs will collaborate with Dr Johnstone on developing and co-writing the grant application, due August 31, and on delivering the resulting programme of activities and events.

How might the Collection be activated to appeal to a range of stakeholders beyond those who usually engage in archival work? For example, how might the Collection be made useful to those who work on very contemporary material or future-facing projects? How might it animate a more visually engaged critical medical humanities, and how might it be made more accessible to artists, activists, local organisations, and other non-traditional researchers?

The opportunity to be a collaborator on this grant application, and on the programme of events it will support, is open to postdoctoral ECRs affiliated to a NNMHR institution, from any discipline, who have research and/or engagement experience in the medical humanities. Successful candidates will need to be able to commit to working collaboratively on the bid over July and early August 2019 (this is likely to include attending a working group in Durham on 15thJuly), and then supporting the project from 2019-2020, should funding be awarded. Limited funding will be available to support in-person meetings of the project team.

This is a career enrichment opportunity intended to allow postdoctoral researchers to gain valuable experience at collaborative grant writing within a well-supported environment, and to be named as co-collaborators on a Wellcome Trust Grant. If the bid is successful, the project will give you the chance to influence the way in which the Wellcome Collection thinks about its holdings, and to make your mark on research activities across the NNMHR. It will offer significant networking opportunities, and the experience of working as part of an interdisciplinary team, devising and delivering a meaningful programme of academic events on time and to budget.

Finally, the project will enhance your own engagement with the Wellcome Collection’s holdings, and provide occasion for you to consider how the Collection might enrich your own research (e.g. by providing a previously unthought of archival dimension to future or current projects, or by suggesting avenues for communicating and collaborating with non-academic audiences and stakeholders).

If the bid is successful, there will be additional opportunities for other researchers to engage with this project beyond the grant writing stage, by contributing to the workshops and other events.

The closing date for expressions of interest was midnight on Sunday 30thJune 2019.

 

Posted on 21 Jun 2019, under News, Projects.

Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries

Title of project:

Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries

 

Name and institution of principle investigators:

Professor Sally Shuttleworth, University of Oxford

 

Names and institutions of co-investigators/ collaborators:

Professor Chris Lintott, University of Oxford

Professor Gowan DawsonUniversity of Leicester

Julie Harvey, Natural History Museum

Paul Cooper, Natural History Museum

Dr John Tweddle, Natural History Museum

Dr Sam Alberti, Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons

Thalia Knight, Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons

Keith Moore, the Royal Society

 

Names and institutions of postdoctoral research assistants:

Dr Sally Frampton, University of Oxford

Dr Geoffrey Belknap, University of Leicester

Dr Berris Charnley, University of Oxford

Dr Jim O’Donnell, University of Oxford

 

Names and institutions of PhD students:

Alison Moulds, University of Oxford

Matthew Wale, University of Leicester
Funding sources:

The AHRC

 

Summary of research:

This project brings together historical and literary research in the nineteenth century with twenty-first century scientific practice, looking at the ways in which patterns of popular communication and engagement in nineteenth-century science can offer models for current practice. It is based at the Universities of Oxford and Leicester, in partnership with the Natural History Museum, the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Royal Society. Researchers are drawing on these institutions’ historical collections, particularly science and medical journals of the nineteenth century. They also work with their scientific communities, addressing questions about the creation and circulation of knowledge in the digital age, and looking at innovative ways of breaking through the public/professional divide.
Project website/webpage:

http://conscicom.org/

 

Anticipated time frame of project:

3 years (December 2013- December 2017)

 

Anticipated audiences:

Historians of Science and Medicine, Cultural and Literary Historians of the Nineteenth Century, Scientific and Medical Professionals, Citizen Scientists and Patients

 

Tagged as: 

Medical Humanities, History of Science, History of Medicine, Journals, Interdisciplinarity, Interdisciplinary Research

 

 

 

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Posted on 07 Jul 2015, under Projects.

Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth Century Perspectives

Title of project:

Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth Century Perspectives

 

Name and institution of principle investigators:

Professor Sally Shuttleworth, University of Oxford

 

Names and institutions of co investigators/collaborators:

Dr Amelia Bonea, University of Oxford

Dr Melissa Dickson, University of Oxford

Dr Jennifer Wallis, University of Oxford

 
Funding sources:

This project is supported by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme under Grant Agreement Number 340121

 

Summary of research:

This project explores medical, literary and cultural responses to perceived problems of stress and overwork in the Victorian age, anticipating many of the preoccupations of our own era. Particular areas of focus include: diseases of finance and speculation, diseases associated with particular professions, alcohol and drug addiction, travel for health, education and over-pressure in the classroom, the development of phobias and nervous disorders, and the imaginative construction of utopias and dystopias. The project aims to break through the compartmentalization of psychiatric, environmental, and literary history, and to offer new ways of contextualising the problems of modernity facing us in the twenty-first century.
Project website/webpage:

http://diseasesofmodernlife.org/

 

Anticipated time frame of project:

5 years (2014-2019)

 

Anticipated audiences:

Historians of Medicine, Historians of Science and Technology, Cultural and Literary Historians of the Nineteenth-Century

 

Tagged as: 

Overpressure, Stress, Nerves, Medical Humanities, Interdisciplinarity, Interdisciplinary Research

 

 

 

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Posted on 19 Jun 2015, under Projects.

CMH New Generations

Title of project:

Centre for Medical Humanities New Generations

 

Name and institution of principle investigators:

Professor Jane Macnaughton, Durham University

 

Names and institutions of co investigators/collaborators:

Northern Network Steering Group:

Dr Bethan Evans, University of Liverpool

Dr Alice Hall, University of York

Dr Gavin Miller, University of Glasgow

Professor Stuart Murray, University of Leeds

Professor Ian Sabroe, University of Sheffield

Dr Anne Whitehead, Newcastle University

Dr Angela Woods, Newcastle University

Kings College Centre for Humanities and Health

Colleagues at the Wellcome Trust

 
Funding sources:

The AHRC

 

Summary of research:

Durham University’s Centre for Medical Humanities, in collaboration with the Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research and the Wellcome Trust has set up the New Generations Programme to address an issue surfacing in the medical humanities. Emerging humanities researchers are increasingly engaging with interdisciplinary research but lack contexts in which to learn about and experience how it is done. Supported by a Collaborative Skills Development grant from the AHRC, this unique programme aims to deliver an exciting and innovative skills development package to a group of doctoral students and early career researchers in the medical humanities while facilitating the development of a supportive, interdisciplinary peer group. Additionally, the programme will create career development opportunities by enabling interaction between participants and staff in key centres of the medical humanities while engaging in discussions on the full range of medical humanities career options.

 
Project website/webpage:

https://www.dur.ac.uk/cmh/newgenerations/

 

Anticipated time frame of project:

August 2014 – September 2015

 

Anticipated audiences:

Medical humanities researchers, medical humanities academics

 

Tagged as: 

medical humanities, interdisciplinary research, skills development, career development, early career researchers, doctoral students

 

Interested in hearing from:

Medical humanities institutions and centres

 

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Posted on 22 Apr 2015, under Projects.

Hubbub

Title of project:

Hubbub (at The Hub at The Wellcome Collection)

 

Name and institution of principle investigators:

Dr Felicity Callard, Durham University

 

Names and institutions of co investigators/collaborators:

Professor Charles Fernyhough, Durham University

Ms Claudia Hammond, freelance

Dr Daniel Margulies, Max Planck Institute for Human, Cognitive & Brain Sciences

Dr James Wilkes, Durham University
Funding sources:

The Wellcome Trust

 

Summary of research:

Hubbub is an international team of scientists, humanists, artists, clinicians, public health experts, broadcasters and public engagement professionals. We explore the dynamics of rest, noise, tumult, activity and work, as they operate in mental health, neuroscience, the arts and the everyday. We are based in London as the first residents of The Hub at Wellcome Collection from October 2014 to July 2016.

Our interdisciplinary project was awarded a £1m grant by the Wellcome Trust. The grant-holding institution is Durham University, and the project also draws on the resources of The Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, and the University of York.

The Hub at Wellcome Collection is an exciting new space that will provide resources and a stimulating space for researchers and other creative minds to collaborate on a project that will explore medicine in historical and cultural contexts. The Hub will make a central contribution to the Trust’s vision of improving human and animal health and be a flagship interdisciplinary environment that nurtures this approach.

 
Project website/webpage:

http://hubbubgroup.org/

 

Anticipated time frame of project:

We are residents of The Hub until end of July 2016

 

Anticipated audiences:

Humanities researchers, social scientists, artists, cognitive neuroscientists, members of the public interested in questions of rest, work, noise, tumult, employees of The Wellcome Trust

 

Tagged as: 

rest, noise, work, interdisciplinary

 

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Posted on 17 Apr 2015, under Projects.

The Life of Breath

 

Title of project:

The Life of Breath

 

Name and institution of principle investigators:

Professor Jane Macnaughton, Durham University and Professor Havi Carel, University of Bristol

 

Names and institutions of co investigators/collaborators:

Literary/cultural studies (Prof Corinne Saunders, Durham University)

Medical history: Dr Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (medical historian, Goldsmiths); Prof Tim Cole (history, Bristol)

Medical Anthropology: Dr Andrew Russell (Durham University) Dr Alice Malpass (University of Bristol)

Respiratory clinicians (Prof Ann Millar and Dr Nick Maskell, Academic Respiratory Unit, University of Bristol)

Respiratory neuroscientist: Dr James Dodd (University of Bristol)

Expert interdisciplinary facilitator and arts in health specialist (Mary Robson, Durham)

Patient representation: Bev Wears, Justin Parsons (British Lung Foundation Breathe Easy Groups).

Design and public engagement: Dr David Swann (expert in healthcare design and service transformation, University of Huddersfield).

Primary care research in COPD: Dr Veronika Williams (University of Oxford).

 

Funding sources:

Wellcome Trust Joint Senior Investigator Award

 

Summary of research:

The ‘Life of Breath’ programme (http://www.lifeofbreath.org/) aims to achieve the fullest possible understanding of breath, breathing and breathlessness by drawing on both biomedical information and on cultural, literary, historical and phenomenological research. Our goal is to use an innovative, medical humanities approach to enhance understanding of breathlessness in healthcare contexts and the effectiveness of interventions in diseases such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in which breathlessness is a key symptom. The programme involves researchers in a range of faculties and departments at Durham University and the University of Bristol, along with clinicians and experts-by-experience.
Project website/webpage:

http://www.lifeofbreath.org/

 

Anticipated time frame of project:

5 years : 2015-2019

 

Anticipated audiences:

Medical humanities scholars, literary/cultural scholars of the body, medical anthropologists, clinicians working in respiratory medicine, patients/carers.

 

Tagged as: 

Interdisciplinarity, medical humanities, breath, breathing, breathlessness.

 

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Posted on 13 Apr 2015, under Projects.