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the human dimensions of healthcare

The Centre for the Humanities and Health (CHH) is a UK leader in the Health Humanities, dedicated to researching the cultural meaning and lived experiences of wellbeing and illness through humanities and creative arts scholarship and practices. CHH is interested in investigating the roles patient experiences play in cultural and medical discourses and how they are valued or disregarded as forms of evidence and expertise contributing to medical and scientific knowledge. CHH aims to: 

  • raise academic and public awareness of the Health Humanities as a locus of research, reflection and teaching on health, wellbeing and illness
  • revalorise subjectivity in healthcare practices and scholarship
  • engage with healthcare services, researchers and patient organisations
  • provide training at masters, PhD, and postdoctoral levels for humanities, medical, nursing and science students.

Publications

Selected publications

Neil Vickers
Brian Hurwitz

Most recent publications from CHH

    Awards

    Sound Young Minds

    £62,000 Strategic Award from King’s Together July 2019
    The aim is to evaluate the City of London Sinfonia’s work with young people to make music at the Maudsley and Bethlem Hospitals.
    Joint PIs: Sally Marlow and Brian Hurwitz.

     

    The Person in Medicine

    £20,000 Strategic Award from King’s Together July 2019
    Our aim is to establish a cross-disciplinary collaboration with our French colleagues on the theme of personhood in the era of personalised medicine and long-term conditions.
    Joint PIs: Neil Vickers and Patrick Ffrench.

     

    The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth

    £1,05M UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship July 2020
    This project explores how we (basic sciences, medical practice and wider culture) talk and think about ageing and how the way we do so can affect our experiences of ageing as well as how we prioritise concerns of older people.
    PI: Martina Zimmermann

    Activities

    Facial transplantation Header
    Whose face is it anyway? The history and politics of facial transplantation - 22 March 2023

    In this paper, Fay Bound Alberti, Professor in Modern History at King’s College London, examines the challenges, politics and ethics of facial transplantation through a discussion of its history, clinical development, psychosocial impacts, and ethical entanglements. The issues raised in this paper – and the work of Interface, which is funded by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship – move beyond the scope of experimental surgery to pose broader questions about embodiment, identity and what it means to be human.

    Graeco-Roman Cures Header 1
    Graeco-Roman Cures by Pretence: A Peculiarly Human Accomplishment - 8 March 2023

    An analysis is proposed of how these manoeuvres work at the cognitive and sensory level of patients, which takes account of the illusions they engender through suggestion and misdirection. I examine how such treatments are performed within practitioner patient relationships, and their dependence on public understanding of culturally sanctioned schemas of medical treatment and explanation. In deploying manipulations which make no recourse to supernatural or occult powers, pretend cures, I argue, represent an important Graeco-Roman human accomplishment.

    Getting Older Film Club
    Getting Older Film Club: SAACY Events

    SAACY runs a film club on the theme of ageing, hoping to show depictions of the ageing process in all its diversity. In collaboration with the Centre for Health Humanities, our Getting Older Film Club screens a series of films on fortnightly Thursday evenings that address our idea that ageing is not something bad that happens at the end of life but a process of lifelong change. All are welcome including King’s students and staff, and SAACY project partners. For more details follow the link below:

    CHH Blog workshop dentist header
    CHH Blog: A Workshop on 'The Mouth'

    On the 7 December 2022 a group of us assembled for a workshop on the topic of ‘the Mouth’, with the aim to discuss the different perspectives at play between Arts and Humanities approaches and those of the caring professions and the disciplines bearing upon them, in this case Dentistry.

    CCH blog med hum header
    Conversations across the medical humanities · Nov 2021

    CHH has been facilitating conversations across departments and faculties at KCL, putting researchers in different fields into contact with one another in order to bring out new dimensions of their individual research.

    CHH blog Mental health header
    Dr Tania Gergel on advance directives for mental illness

    "The debate over self-binding directives has been working through these issues since the 1980s. However, one voice that was largely missing was the voice of ‘lived experience’", says Dr Tania Gergel for Psyche.co

    CHH blog disability reading header
    Disability + Intersectionality Reading Group · Jul 2021

    Disability+Intersectionality is a fortnightly reading group which meets to discuss key texts in critical disability studies, situating them within the broader context of the humanities and social sciences.

    CHH blog virtual book club header
    CHH virtual book club · Jul 2021

    CHH ran a virtual book club themed around pandemics. Participants met regularly to discuss the books during the first UK lockdown, and many fascinating conversations came out of these texts.

    Education

    Modules in the Health Humanities

    The following modules offer a sample of the opportunities available for undergraduate (levels 4,5 and 6) and taught postgraduate (level 7) students to study topics related to the health humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, subject to availability in any one year.

    Department of Classics

    Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries

    Department of Digital Humanities

    • 7AAVDC20 Digital Health

    Department of English

    Department of History

    Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

    Department of Philosophy

     

    Publications

    Selected publications

    Neil Vickers
    Brian Hurwitz

    Most recent publications from CHH

      Awards

      Sound Young Minds

      £62,000 Strategic Award from King’s Together July 2019
      The aim is to evaluate the City of London Sinfonia’s work with young people to make music at the Maudsley and Bethlem Hospitals.
      Joint PIs: Sally Marlow and Brian Hurwitz.

       

      The Person in Medicine

      £20,000 Strategic Award from King’s Together July 2019
      Our aim is to establish a cross-disciplinary collaboration with our French colleagues on the theme of personhood in the era of personalised medicine and long-term conditions.
      Joint PIs: Neil Vickers and Patrick Ffrench.

       

      The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth

      £1,05M UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship July 2020
      This project explores how we (basic sciences, medical practice and wider culture) talk and think about ageing and how the way we do so can affect our experiences of ageing as well as how we prioritise concerns of older people.
      PI: Martina Zimmermann

      Activities

      Facial transplantation Header
      Whose face is it anyway? The history and politics of facial transplantation - 22 March 2023

      In this paper, Fay Bound Alberti, Professor in Modern History at King’s College London, examines the challenges, politics and ethics of facial transplantation through a discussion of its history, clinical development, psychosocial impacts, and ethical entanglements. The issues raised in this paper – and the work of Interface, which is funded by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship – move beyond the scope of experimental surgery to pose broader questions about embodiment, identity and what it means to be human.

      Graeco-Roman Cures Header 1
      Graeco-Roman Cures by Pretence: A Peculiarly Human Accomplishment - 8 March 2023

      An analysis is proposed of how these manoeuvres work at the cognitive and sensory level of patients, which takes account of the illusions they engender through suggestion and misdirection. I examine how such treatments are performed within practitioner patient relationships, and their dependence on public understanding of culturally sanctioned schemas of medical treatment and explanation. In deploying manipulations which make no recourse to supernatural or occult powers, pretend cures, I argue, represent an important Graeco-Roman human accomplishment.

      Getting Older Film Club
      Getting Older Film Club: SAACY Events

      SAACY runs a film club on the theme of ageing, hoping to show depictions of the ageing process in all its diversity. In collaboration with the Centre for Health Humanities, our Getting Older Film Club screens a series of films on fortnightly Thursday evenings that address our idea that ageing is not something bad that happens at the end of life but a process of lifelong change. All are welcome including King’s students and staff, and SAACY project partners. For more details follow the link below:

      CHH Blog workshop dentist header
      CHH Blog: A Workshop on 'The Mouth'

      On the 7 December 2022 a group of us assembled for a workshop on the topic of ‘the Mouth’, with the aim to discuss the different perspectives at play between Arts and Humanities approaches and those of the caring professions and the disciplines bearing upon them, in this case Dentistry.

      CCH blog med hum header
      Conversations across the medical humanities · Nov 2021

      CHH has been facilitating conversations across departments and faculties at KCL, putting researchers in different fields into contact with one another in order to bring out new dimensions of their individual research.

      CHH blog Mental health header
      Dr Tania Gergel on advance directives for mental illness

      "The debate over self-binding directives has been working through these issues since the 1980s. However, one voice that was largely missing was the voice of ‘lived experience’", says Dr Tania Gergel for Psyche.co

      CHH blog disability reading header
      Disability + Intersectionality Reading Group · Jul 2021

      Disability+Intersectionality is a fortnightly reading group which meets to discuss key texts in critical disability studies, situating them within the broader context of the humanities and social sciences.

      CHH blog virtual book club header
      CHH virtual book club · Jul 2021

      CHH ran a virtual book club themed around pandemics. Participants met regularly to discuss the books during the first UK lockdown, and many fascinating conversations came out of these texts.

      Education

      Modules in the Health Humanities

      The following modules offer a sample of the opportunities available for undergraduate (levels 4,5 and 6) and taught postgraduate (level 7) students to study topics related to the health humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, subject to availability in any one year.

      Department of Classics

      Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries

      Department of Digital Humanities

      • 7AAVDC20 Digital Health

      Department of English

      Department of History

      Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

      Department of Philosophy

       

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