Medical humanities research uses interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches to investigate experiences of health and illness which are marginalised, difficult, unspeakable or invisible. It aims to improve health policy and practice and benefit the lives of communities and individuals.
The Institute for Medical Humanities coordinates and supports research on the lived experience of health and illness, with a focus on what they call 'hidden experience'.
The Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities brings together humanities and social science researchers, people with lived experience and people working in different sectors to co-develop new and experimental approaches to tackling health challenges.
We think of categories like height, weight, and sex as integral to health assessment. Drawing on insights from disability history and history of science, my work explores how these categories were constructed, and how they have influenced subsequent provision and compensation for the disabled. Making disability visible in the categorisation processes central to science will destabilise the personal health paradigm and invigorate our understanding of how the environment and the individual interact.
Find out more about Coreen McGuire’s project When Categories Constrain Care.
It’s easy to measure your pulse or take your temperature. Modern technology even allows us to monitor people’s brain activity. Yet we still struggle to understand the complexity of people’s emotional worlds and the transformative impact that they have on our day-to-day wellbeing. In the Affective Experience Lab, which I co-lead with my colleague Corinne Saunders, we are drawing on innovative research methods from across the arts and humanities, social sciences and sciences to shed new light on the relationship between feeling, emotion and health.
Learn more about The Affective Experience Lab.
The field of Medical Humanities combines the insights and perspectives of the humanities and social sciences
Our research-led education ensures our broad range of courses will challenge and inspire you.
Visit the Transformative Humanities page to find out more about current research projects of other Transformative Humanities strands.
Find out more about the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Durham University.
Unbound from clinic, we frame health differently. Our vision for health is for people to thrive in the places they live.
Learn more about the Faculty's six departments and one school.
In this episode, Dr Georgina Robinson, Postdoctoral Research Associate, at the Department of Theology and Religion and Centre for Death-Life Studies, talks about her research on death taboo, death style, water cremation, and her fascinating work with funeral directors during COVID.
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