Health and humanities research projects
Featured research:
Creative practice as mutual recovery
Enhancing mental health and wellbeing through the use of the arts and other creative practices.
Read more
Current research
This research investigates the relationship between reality TV and women’s experiences of pregnancy and labour. The project will bring together perspectives from midwifery, sociology, television studies and health humanities, as well as seeking the views of service users, activists and the TV industry. The objective is to develop a new approach to questions about the role of TV in shaping women’s perceptions of risk, autonomy and choice during labour. This project is funded by a Wellcome Seed Award.
Performing Cerebral Palsy
Performing CP: Healthcare, Ageing, Access is an interdisciplinary research project funded by the AHRC's Impact Accelerator Award. The aim of the project is to investigate the potential of creative practice to create educational resources that communicate new knowledge and understanding on ageing and experiences of healthcare for people living with cerebral palsy (CP).
Completed projects
International Health Humanities Network
The
International Health Humanities Network provides a global platform for innovative humanities scholars; medical, health and social care professionals; voluntary sector workers and creative practitioners to join forces with informal and family carers, service-users and the wider self-caring public. These collaborations explore, celebrate and develop new approaches in advancing health and wellbeing through the arts and humanities in hospitals and residential and community settings.
Madness and Literature Network
The
Madness and Literature Network aims to stimulate cooperation and co-working between researchers, academics, clinicians, service users, carers and creative writers in order to develop an interdisciplinary, global dialogue about the issues raised around representations of madness in literature.
A study of the representation of madness in post-1945 British and American Fiction
This project featured researchers with backgrounds in literary studies, social psychology, medical psychiatry and psychiatric nursing. It also led to a monograph looking at representations of madness in a range of texts by postwar writers such as Ken Kesey, Marge Piercy, Patrick McGrath, Leslie Marmon Silko, William Golding, Patrick Gale, William Burroughs and J.G. Ballard, to name a few. The project explored ways in which these representations help to shape public perceptions and how they portray highly unique experiences of mental disorder.