Conversations about Arts, Humanities and Health

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Cathy, Jason and Phil about  Personalised and public health: learning (and not learning) from the past.  Our guests share a research interest around public health, personalised health, the politics of health, but have different disciplinary training. During the conversation, we tease out some of the similarities but also differences between past an...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Martina about appliedness and medical education, medical humanities and (the lack of) defined disciplinary identity, and how the medical humanities interact with multiple academic disciplines in research and teaching. Martina King  studied medicine, German literature and philosophy in Munich and qualified as paediatrician. After 15 years of clinica...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Stella and Neil about Care . Key themes include: the place of self-care in contemporary writing and medical humanities; theories of care in the medical humanities and further afield; the relationship of care to narratives of illness and disability; care deficits and the long shadow that they cast in illness narratives. Dr Stella Bolaki  is Reader i...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Ben andJohn about Queer Medical Humanities. Key themes include:queer inclusivity in hospitals and hospital design, knowledge in healthcare and, issues of healthcare delivery, queer methodologies for healthcare futures andpoliticisation of health and queer healthcare. Dr Benjamin Dalton  is Lecturer in French Studies in theSchool of Global Affairs a...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Luna and Will about shame. Key themes include: understanding shame, the role shame can play at work and shame competence. Luna Dolezal  is Professor of Philosophy and Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter. She has been researching shame for over 15 years, and is PI of the  Shame and Medicine Project  (2020-2025), funded by the Wellcome Tru...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Ria and Stuart about Uncertainty . Key themes include: imposter syndrome and participation in academic/institutional culture; pressures of speaking with authority; precarityand career development; the uncertainty of the current HE environment; vulnerability and humility as research positions; generative possibilities of uncertainty as a critical to...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Dr Arya Thampuran and Prof Sarah de Leeuw about decolonizing our practices . Key themes include: decolonial practice in academic spaces (non-extractive methodologies and representational labour); capitalism and extractive decontextualization; depoliticization of indigenous knowledges and practices; feminist queer-informed anti-colonial methodologie...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Dr Gavin Miller and Dr Anna McFarlane about their work on science fiction and the medical humanities. Gavin and Anna explain what science fiction has to offer the medical humanities, and how science fiction shapes our understanding of the future of healthcare, when the line between healthcare and biological enhancement could become increasingly blu...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Anne and Jenn about writing and personal stories in the context of medical and health humanities . Anne discusses how she combined the personal and the critical in writing her monograph  Relating Suicide: A Personal and Critical Reflection . Jenn shares her experience of how care providers can integrate creative practices with healthcare and how su...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Prof Guo Liping and Prof Vivienne Lo about the  cross-cultural medical and health humanities  and their collaborative work on film and the  Chinese Medical Humanities . Prof Guo Liping  is Professor of English, Director, Centre for Narrative Medicine of Peking University Health Science Centre, Vice Dean, School of Health Humanities, Peking Universi...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Dr Michelle Chiang about her work on the value of  illness stories , and how they could potentially inform or challenge our existing understanding of health, illness and dying. Michelle discusses her experience as a literary scholar and a medical humanities researcher in the  Singapore research landscape , which is still trying to wrap its head aro...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Professor Dan Goodley and Dr Kirsty Liddiard about the contributions of critical disability studies to the medical humanities, including the ‘absent presence’ of disability in medical humanities. Dan and Kirsty advocate for a paradigm shift that centres disability as the driving subject of inquiry and discuss proposed programmes of research, includ...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Dr Brandy Schillace about medicine and its engagement with the humanities . This episode explores how the humanities engage and reflect critically upon the practices of health, as well as shape conversation and lead the way for social justice and change. Brandy also discusses the new global initiatives launched by BMJ’s Medical Humanities . Dr. Bra...

Co-hosts Ian Sabroe and Dieter Declercq talk with Karla and Bill on the topic of death and dying. This episode explores the complex terrain of race and gender at the intersection of literature, law and bioethics, alongside clinical perspectives on the transformative power of bereavement and the social benefits of funeral ceremonies. Professor Karla FC Holloway is James B. Duke Emerita Professor of...

Ian and Dieter talk with Dr Chisomo Kalinga and Dr Carla Tsampiras about the growth of Medical and Health Humanities Africa (MHHA). Adopting an intersectional perspective , Chisomo and Carla discuss many exciting projects and initiatives focused on the south of the continent. Dr Chisomo Kalinga is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh. Her work app...

Ian and Dieter talk with Prof Miranda Fricker and Prof Havi Carel about epistemic injustice , harms in health contexts, and the connections that philosophical thinking has with literature and art. Miranda Fricker is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research is primarily in Ethics and Social Epistemology with a special interest in virtue and feminist perspecti...

Ian and Dieter talk with Dr Ian Williams and Dr Muna Al-Jawad about graphic medicine and explore the intersection between the medium of comics and the discourse of healthcare.  Dr Ian Williams is a comics artist, writer and doctor who lives in Brighton. His graphic novel, The Bad Doctor , was published in 2014 and followed up in 2019 by The Lady Doctor . Both were critically acclaimed and he is wo...

Ian and Dieter talk with Prof Angela Woods (Durham University) about moving from Australia to the UK to develop her research in medical humanities, and about how the field has grown and changed over the last 10 years. They also discuss some of the challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration and about what we can do to identify and address barriers to the further evolution of the medical and heal...

Dieter and Ian talk with Sue Foster and Dr Matt Jennings about their work with Health Action Training , a project combining techniques drawn from actor training and applied drama to help improve person-centred communication and resilience for nurses and other health and social care professionals. Sue Foster is a Lecturer in Nursing. As a nurse of more than 30 years standing, she has worked in a va...

Dieter and Ian talk with Dr Sayantani DasGupta about her work in health humanities/narrative medicine, particularly her work at the intersection of narrative, health and social justice. Sayantani will discuss the importance of pedagogy in her scholarly work, and the impact of her identity as a children's and YA author to her scholarship, and vice versa. Click here for the article by Maria Sachiko...

Ian and Dieter talk with Prof Margarita Saona (University of Illinois Chicago) about her experience as a literary scholar trying to find her way through the labyrinth of the health humanities. You'll also hear about Margarita’s experience of being a heart transplant patient, and how this impacted her writing and her thinking. Prof Margarita Saona teaches literature at the University of Illinois Ch...

Prof Ian Sabroe and Dr Dieter Declercq talk to Dr Keisha Ray about her ground-breaking work in Black bioethics, her journey to studying Black people's health, and what she wants the world to know about Black health. Keisha Ray, PhD received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Utah and is currently an assistant professor with the McGovern Center for Humanities & Ethics at the Universit...

Prof Ian Sabroe and Dr Dieter Declercq talk to Prof Paul Crawford about his ground-breaking work as the world's first professor of health humanities and his research into how creative practices advance health and mental well-being. Check out 'What's Up With Everyone?' Paul's recent campaign with the animation studio Aardman. Paul Crawford is Professor of Health Humanities at the School of Health S...

To mark the end of our first season, we are putting out this bonus episode of the podcast. Prof Ian Sabroe and Dr Dieter Declercq talk with previous guest and friend of the podcast Dr Lauren Barron and look back on the first season of Conversations About Arts Humanities and Health and the series as a whole. This conversation was originally recorded as part of the Mayo Clinic's 'Humanities in Medic...

Prof Ian Sabroe and Dr Dieter Declercq talk to Prof Rita Charon about her pioneering work in narrative medicine, as well as the pivotal role of aesthetics and aesthetic experiences in the practices of narrative medicine. Rita Charon is a general internist and literary scholar who originated the field of narrative medicine. She is Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities...