Medical Humanities

Working at the cutting-edge of scholarship at the intersection of culture, medicine, and technology, our researchers uncover the often-hidden experiences of health and illness, shaping how these are understood and informing decision-making in healthcare research and provision. 

Interdisciplinary engaged research forms a central part of the Wellcome Trust-funded projects ‘Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures’ (itDf) and ‘LivingBodiesObjects’ (LBO), which are both based in the School of English and have involved collaborations between our researchers and an international team of scholars from a range of different disciplines. Research by Clare Barker, Amelia DeFalco, and Stuart Murray into disability, technology, health and care generated new understandings of how storytelling and other creative practices can transform working methods in health- and care-related organisations. 

Clare Barker’s work for LBO has focused on representations of the gas disaster that took place in Bhopal, India in 1984, and on the generation of digital storytelling practices, skills development, and increased fundraising capacity for the Bhopal Medical Appeal.

Amelia DeFalco’s research underpins both itDf and LBO and investigates representations of nonhuman care in literature, film, and television. Amelia’s AHRC-funded ‘Imagining Posthuman Care’ project involved public engagement activities at the Leeds International Film Festival and Thackray Museum of Medicine, and her research continues to investigate posthuman approaches to care.   

Stuart Murray has worked extensively on the relationship between technologies and bodies, especially in terms of health and disability. In a series of research projects including itDf and LBO, he has collaborated with engineers, roboticists, designers, philosophers, historians, creative artists, charities and disabled people’s organisations, trying to make sense of what ideas of the body are produced when they encounter new and emerging technologies in particular. At the heart of these explorations is his interest in how stories and creative methods weave through all these engagements, and his research poses some fundamental questions: in the highly technologized bubble worlds in which we tend to live, how do we discuss what kinds of bodies are valued today? And what questions drive our ideas of technology futures?