The Future(s) of Medical Humanities is a three-part series produced and hosted by Ends of Knowledge collaborators Mona Baie, Swati Joshi.
What does the future of the medical humanities look like to YOU? And what are the obstacles you encounter in shaping that future? In a report commissioned by the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University, Sarah McLusky (2022) states that one of the main challenges medical humanities researchers are facing is ''to feel isolated lacking like-minded peers''. With this mini-series we want to open a networking and discussion space for anyone working or interested in the medical and health humanities, but particularly so PhD students and early career researchers from across the globe. We hope to lay grounds for a fruitful conversation about the present state of our field, and our hopes and visions for its (multiple) future(s). We encourage people from non-anglophone countries, and countries where medical humanities as an (institutionalised) field is barely existent or just emerging, to participate and express ideas and concerns.
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Connecting Anglophone and Non-Anglophone Worlds
Chaired by Mona Baie and Swati Joshi.
First session: March 8th, 12pm GMT
What constitutes medical humanities as a field and what factors shape its future can look very different from the perspective of different countries – we, the hosts of the miniseries and originally from India, Germany, and Sweden, are very aware of this. Therefore, we are dedicating the introductory session to international (and multilingual) networking and exchange. We hope to hear from a diverse group of people – both within and outside the UK/US – about their experiences in the current medical and health humanities as well as their visions for the field’s future.
Group discussions might revolve around questions such as:
· What are the challenges, fears, hopes, visions… of (early career) researchers working in the medical and health humanities, both within and outside the UK/US?
· What role do national, cultural and linguistic differences play in medical humanities research, teaching, and collaborations? What does translation do to medical humanities concepts and orientations?
· What does the future of the medical humanities look like to you and in your country?
You can access the event Zoom link in this website’s password-protected Members section which will be regularly emailed out via our mailing list. Alternatively, please email James Rákóczi, Mona Baie, or Swati Joshi at endsofknowledge@gmail.com for the Zoom link and let us know if you have any questions.
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Suggested reading (for all three sessions):
Macnaughton, J. (2017). The past, present, and future of medical humanities. Postmedieval 8, 234–239. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-017-0050-6
Shapiro, J. (2012). Whither (Whether) Medical Humanities? The Future of Humanities and Arts in Medical Education. Journal for Learning through the Arts 8(1). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3x2898ww
Crawford, P., Brown, B., Tischler, V. & Baker, C. (2010). Health humanities: the future of medical humanities? Mental Health Review 15(4). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236851204_Health_humanities_the_future_of_medical_humanities
McLusky, S. (2022). Overcoming barriers to progress in medical humanities research. Report commissioned by the IMH at Durham University, UK. https://www.durham.ac.uk/media/durham-university/research-/research-institutes/institute-for-medical-humanities/Overcoming-Barriers-to-Progress-in-Medical-Humanities-McLusky-2022.pdf
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Mona Baie is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Prior to joining the humanities, she completed a medical degree at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where she is still involved in undergraduate teaching. She is also a UCL alumni. Her research interests include: German and English literature of the 20th and 21st centuries, medical space and ‘the clinic’ from historical, literary and cultural perspectives, medical didactics, & critical university studies.
Swati Joshi is pursuing her doctoral studies on Samuel Beckett and Carescapes that sits at the intersection of Beckett Studies and Medical Humanities at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar. She spent a semester at CHSTM, University of Manchester, as a visiting doctoral fellow. Her research is published in Humanities | MDPI, Medical Humanities BMJ, The Polyphony, among other places. Currently, she is co-guest-editing a double special issue of Journal of Medical Humanities.
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Image used for event banner Credit: Brocke and Wernicke areas of brain, MRI. Katja Heuer and Roberto Toro. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)