IMH NEWSLETTER - DECEMBER 2022
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New year, new building
After over a decade in the much-loved Caedmon Building, IMH is moving to new offices!
From January onwards, you will be able to find us in the newly refurbished Confluence Building on Durham University's Science Site. Reflecting the University's commitment to medical humanities at Durham, the space is modern and accessible, with the integrated conference rooms and large foyer space offering new and exciting opportunities for us to bring people together.
We hope that you have a wonderful Christmas break and look forward to welcoming you to our new home in 2023.
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Call for papers! NNMHR Congress 2023
What does the ‘critical’ in critical medical humanities mean to you? Submissions are now being invited for Critical: NNMHR Congress 2023 (19-21 April 2023). We particularly welcome abstracts from those who do not necessarily identify themselves as medical humanities researchers, as well as those working outside the formal structures of the university.
For more information about the Congress and to read the call for papers, please visit the NNMHR website.
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Launch of MA in Medical Humanities
Would you like to learn how your previous educational training in English, Philosophy, Theology, Social Science or Medicine could be expanded, enriched, and applied to pressing issues of health and wellbeing in our world?
Our new programmes in Medical Humanities are open for applications for 2023/24. The courses are designed to be accessible and flexible for students and professionals from different backgrounds and juggling different life commitments, including the world's first online MA in the field of medical and health humanities.
We are also offering a scholarship for a student who identifies as a member of an ethnic minority community in the UK to join our Masters course. Apply for the scholarship by 1 May 2023!
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Weekday Worldviews: The Patrons, Promise and Payoff of Psychic Nights in England
Lecturer in Medical Humanities Adam Powell has been awarded a collaborative research grant as a Principal Investigator for Weekday Worldviews, a mixed-methods study of the attendees of psychic nights and other spiritualist events in England.
Read more.
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Religion, Health, and Humanities Researchers (RHHR)
We are excited to share news of a new medical humanities network! The first international network of its kind, the RHHR exists to cultivate humanities and social science scholarship at the intersection of religion, spirituality and health by fostering cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaborations and increasing the exposure of research in these areas. The network launched at an online event on December 15, where attendees heard from the RHHR Leadership Team about the plans and benefits of the network.
To find out more about how you can get involved, please visit the RHHR website.
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Louise Creechan discusses spelling mistakes on BBC Radio 3
New Generation Thinker and Lecturer in Medical Humanities Louise Creechan was recently on BBC Free Thinking to talk about spelling mistakes and Thomas Hardy for their episode on 19th-century education reform, accents and literature. Listen to "Language, the Victorians, and Us".
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Creative Facilitation: Transforming approaches to interdisciplinary and cross-sector research - new IMH report
Sustaining interdisciplinarity is difficult work and to address this challenge the IMH hosts an in-house Creative Facilitator called Mary Robson, who uses her extensive experience on creative practice to bring creative approaches into the academy as a facilitator for interdisciplinary research teams and projects.
This exciting report was commissioned by IMH to unpack what Creative Facilitation is, to explore how people have experienced Mary's Creative Facilitation in different contexts and the impacts using this approach has had. Download the report.
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Hearing the Voice: Interdisciplinary voice-hearing research (2012-2022) - new HtV brochure
December saw the publication of a new brochure presenting a selection of research and engagement findings from over a decade's worth of work from Hearing the Voice, an interdisciplinary research project that set out to shed light on the phenomenon of voice-hearing.
This new booklet presents twelve of the project's most significant findings and can be freely downloaded on our website.
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IMH has a new Assistant Manager - Becca Doggwiler
We are pleased to welcome Becca Doggwiler to IMH as an Assistant Manager, job-sharing with Jane Abel. Becca previously supported the Hearing the Voice project at IMH.
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Visiting PhD student - Cat Chong
We are delighted to welcome Cat Chong as a visiting PhD student from Nanyang Technical University, Singapore.
Based at IMH until the end of 2023, Cat is a poet, publisher, essayist, and medical humanities PhD student. Their work considers the intersections between genderqueerness, disability, and chronic illness within lyric hybrid-genre memoirs.
Find out more about Cat.
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Durham Centre for the Philosophy of Epidemiology: Disease and Power workshop
This December, IMH were honoured to host this workshop, which welcomed researchers from several African countries and universities. Representing over 15 disciplines, attendees unpacked the implications of COVID 19 for global health inequalities with IMH Creative Facilitator Mary Robson.
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Breakthrough! Research Cabaret
“What good is sitting alone in your room? […] come to the [research] cabaret, old chum!”
On 16 November, IMH held its first in-person research cabaret evening at the Old Cinema Launderette in Durham. "Breakthrough! A research cabaret" was run as part of the Being Human Festival and featured live performances from researchers, local musicians, and persons with lived experience of illness.
Read more.
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Creative Facilitation training
13 January, 10 February
Mary Robson will be leading two related workshops on The Fundamentals of Creative Facilitation. This round of training was open to participants from different sectors to encourage development of cross—sector links and skills development.
Find out more about our Creative Facilitation Unit.
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Confabulations: New online events 2023
18 January, 6-7.30pm, 1 February, 4-5.30pm
The next instalment of Fiona Johnstone's Confabulations series looks at critical perspectives on art therapy, and institutional violence in mental health.
Read more.
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Haunting, alienation & uncertain selves: White is For Witching
24 January, 4-5pm (online)
Join Kelechi Anucha, Veronica Heney, and Arya Thampuran for a discussion of Helen Oyeyemi’s captivating 2009 novel White is for Witching which follows a young woman who has lost her mother, and whose experiences of grief and mental distress are intertwined with the malevolent presence and even actions of the family home, The Silver House.
Following initial prompts and provocations, this online event will prioritise wide-ranging discussion between all attendees, as we explore the complexities and nuances of this extraordinary text.
Reserve your place.
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“The ‘floated’ feeling of music”: Weaving Histories of Art, Technology, and Disability
27 January, 12-1pm | Dawson Building (Archaeology Department, Durham University) and online
We warmly invite you to join us for Dr Jaipreet Virdi's lecture on Dorothy Brett's The Stokowski Symphony, which will explore the ways in which the artist's most underrated portrait series captures how her hearing aids mediated her experiences of music.
This hybrid event is free to attend and your space can be reserved via Eventbrite.
Register for online place.
Register for in-person place.
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"Relating Suicide: A Personal and Critical Perspective
2 February, 5-7:30pm | Birley Room (Hatfield College, Durham University)
We are delighted to host an in-person event to mark the publication of Anne Whitehead’s Relating Suicide: A Personal and Critical Perspective.
The session will feature introductions by IMH Director Professor Angela Woods and Linda Anderson (Professor Emerita of Modern English and American Literature at Newcastle University), readings from the book by Anne, and conversation with Patricia Waugh (Professor Emerita of English Literature at Durham University).
The event is free to attend and your space can be reserved via Eventbrite.
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Hold the date(s): IMH Seminar Series
9 March-22 June
We will be launching the IMH Seminar Series on March 9. Encompassing a broad range of disciplines, our speakers will be delivering hybrid seminars throughout the spring and summer of 2023. We can't wait!
Confirmed speakers:
March 9: Robert Chapman
April 27: TBC
May 18: Xine Yao
June 22: Ericka Johnson
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Akiko Hart, Tehseen Noorani and Mary Sadid point to orientalism in critical mental health discourses and practices, and invite contributions that help us trace, resist and overturn these problematic tendencies across mental healthcare, wellbeing and biomedicine.
Read more
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In this six-part series about the study of zines in the medical humanities, Lea Cooper starts in the bedroom, where many zines begin their lives.
Read more.
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Writer and psychologist Louise Kenward explores the links between illness writing and writing about place, nature and travel.
Read more.
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Voices in Psychosis: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Angela Woods, Ben Alderson-Day and Charles Fernyhough
Voice-hearing experiences associated with psychosis are highly varied, frequently distressing, poorly understood, and deeply stigmatised, even within mental health settings. Voices in Psychosis responds to the urgent need for new ways of listening to and making sense of these experiences. It brings multiple disciplinary, clinical, and experiential perspectives from members and close associates of Hearing the Voice to bear on an original and extraordinarily rich body of testimony: transcripts of forty in-depth phenomenological interviews conducted with people who hear voices and who have accessed Early Intervention in Psychosis services.
Download the book for free.
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