From Field to Page: Core Skills in the Medical Humanities
CHASE Cohort Training Days
July 5th & November 8th 2018
Keynes Library
School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London
43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD
Medical humanities continues to emerge as a live and transforming field of enquiry. The core work of this field seeks to explore and critique biomedical science and its histories through the various critical frameworks of the humanities disciplines. Medical humanities research presents scholars with the particular challenges of transdisciplinary research undertaken across the radically different domains of medicine and the humanities’ academic disciplines. Across the CHASE institutions there is a diverse cohort of medical humanities doctoral researchers that incorporates students from both clinical and non-clinical, humanities backgrounds. As such the cohort represents a broad range of skills-sets, work, academic and training experiences, and previous exposure to the critical methods central to the humanities disciplines. Clinicians come into the field of research with substantial situated knowledge of the real-life settings and practices of medicine and surgery but often with the need to acquire, through training the requisite skills of critical thinking and writing. Conversely, non-clinicians and humanities’ scholars are much better versed in critical practice and inquiry, but lack the grounded, lived experience of clinical practice. The range of research projects undertaken in the field is markedly diverse, ranging from practice-led (examining the nature of clinical practice), to practice-based (using clinical practice as research), to purely analytic (discursive analysis) modes of inquiry but all undertake to situate medicine, disease, patient experience, clinical practice and medical education within socio-cultural and/or historical contexts in such a way that critical analysis and discursive understandings may be produced. The aims of medical humanities theses may, or may not, have the avowed intention of contributing to the practical fields of clinical practice, delivery of healthcare or medical education. All medical humanities theses must adhere to the core methodologies and practices of the humanities disciplines and this means that critical thinking and writing skills are key requirements of the medical humanities doctorate.
The CHASE Consortium will deliver two training days, which map the core skills required of medical humanities doctoral research and support doctoral researchers as they undertake their projects.
Registration for both days is free and open to all PhD students at CHASE institutions.
There are 10 travel bursaries available for students without CHASE funding, these will be awarded on a first come, first served basis.
To register, please contact Jo Winning, j.winning@bbk.ac.uk by 25th June 2018
Programme
Day 1, July 5tth 2018
10.15-10.30am: Coffee and Registration
10.30-11.15am: Keynote Lecture 1: Mapping the field (Jo Winning, Birkbeck)
11.15am-12.30pm: The challenges of transdisciplinarity and the problems of language (Birkbeck/Wellcome ISSF Medical Humanities Fellows)
12.30-1.30pm: Lunch
13.30-2.30pm: Open Space to discuss the morning sessions
2.30-3.45pm: Working with stakeholders: public engagement and impact (Ross Macfarlane, Wellcome; Deborah Padfield, St George’s Medical School; Wendy Earle, Birkbeck Impact Officer)
3.45pm-4pm: Coffee
4-5.15pm: Breakout group sessions to discuss intersections of the sessions with individual research projects
5.30pm: Happy 70th Birthday NHS, Drinks Reception, followed by evening tour of the Wellcome Collection
Day 2, November 8th 2018
10.15-10.30am: Coffee and Registration
10.30-11.15am: Keynote Lecture 2: From academy to clinic, and back again (tbc)
11.15am-12.30pm: Medical Humanities and Ethics (tbc)
12.30-1.30pm: Lunch
13.30-2.30pm: Open Space to discuss the morning sessions
2.30-3.45pm: Putting theory into practice: medical humanities as practice-based research (tbc)
3.45pm-4pm: Coffee
4-5.15pm: Breakout group sessions to discuss intersections of the sessions with individual research projects
5.30pm: Panel discussion and Drinks Reception, hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Medical Humanities