I am Professor of English Literature and the Health Humanities and co-director of the Centre for the Humanities and Health. I previously had a career in epidemiology and public health. Following a BA at Trinity College Dublin, I went to Paris where I studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Université de Paris VII (Jussieu). My MPhil and DPhil research – on Coleridge – was carried out at Balliol College, Oxford. Previous posts in English include a stint as University Lecturer in Romanticism at Cambridge (where I was also Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Corpus Christi College) and Stipendiary Lecturer in English at Jesus College, Oxford.

Research interests and PhD supervision

My current research lies exclusively in the health humanities. I am currently writing what I hope will be the first book-length history of the medical/health humanities. My latest book (co-authored with Derek Bolton), Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and Abandonment, was published by Reaktion Books in 2024. It is about what major illness does to social belonging in the WEIRD world (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic). A major diagnosis changes how others see us, in ways that are difficult to control. Few if any relationships remain the same. Relations with intimate others often become closer as we become more dependent on them; more distant contacts become more strained; and, if the illness is visible, even relations with complete strangers may become fraught. These transformations in social identity are seldom discussed. Drawing on social neuroscience, group psychology, psychoanalysis, infant research, disability theory and microsociology, we offer a psychobiological account of relations between the healthy and the ill in contemporary Western societies that highlights the creative power of care and the devastation of abandonment. Highly individualistic societies are bad at supporting the supporters of the ill. We show how a sense of connectedness and group belonging can not only improve care but also make societies more resilient to illness.

I recently edited (with Patrick ffrench and Céline Lefève) a special number of the History of the Human Sciences on the history of the medical humanities in France and the English-speaking world.

I have a strong interest in the history of the Psy disciplines – but most especially the British psychoanalytic tradition – and their relation to concepts of health and illness more generally.

I am happy to talk to anyone interested in working on a PhD in any of these research fields. For more details, please see my full research profile.

Teaching

I teach health humanities courses, courses on contemporary Irish literature and on literature and psychoanalysis.

Expertise and public engagement

'I was external advisor to UCL’s Commission into the Future of the Humanities, sitting on the humanities and the sciences working party. I am a member of the Comité Scientifique of the Institut la Personne en médecine and a board member of the Centre Georges Canguilhem in Paris. I am also an academic associate of the Freud Museum and a founding scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council. I sit on the editorial boards of BMJ Medical Humanities, Soin, Sens et Santé with special responsibility for English-language submissions, as well as the History of the Human Sciences. I am also a member of the advisory board for The Collected Letters of Thomas Beddoes (to be published by the Royal Institution) and for The Collected Letters of Thomas Wedgwood (ditto).

I discuss my book Being Ill on the New Books in Medicine and Art, Humanities and Health podcasts, and I talk about the medical humanities on the BMJ Medical Humanities podcast.

Selected publications

• 'Critique, critical theory and systems theory in the medical humanities: a history and a call to action.' BMJ Medical Humanities
• Vickers, N., Lefève, C. & ffrench, P., The Medical Humanities in the USA and France: Towards a Comparative History. History of the Human Sciences. (available free to download)
• 'The Narrative Based Medical Humanities, 1980-1995' History of the Human Sciences 2025 (available free to download)
• Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and Abandonment (with Derek Bolton). London: Reaktion 2024.
• 'Illness Narrative' in A History of English Autobiography. Smyth, A. (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2016, p. 388-401