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Public Health Humanities

Understanding, developing, and advocating for the arts and humanities within public health research, training, and practice.

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About

The Public Health Humanities network advocates for the importance of arts and humanities research and education within public health; works to overcome barriers to their inclusion; and facilitates connections amongst and between arts and humanities professionals and the wider public health community.

Events

The network hosts a range of seminars, workshops, and other events.

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About
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The Public Health Humanities network responds to calls for the integration of a wider range of disciplinary perspectives within public health, including long-standing work to incorporate history into public health education. Such initiatives have made a powerful case for the value of the arts and humanities as disciplines that develop and deepen understanding, instil curiosity and humility, provide powerful evidence, and generate better public health policy and practice. Public health declares itself to be highly multidisciplinary, but it still remains rare to see concepts, methods, and insights from the humanities integrated into public health research, publications, curricula, and practice.

Our aims

The network therefore aims to: 

  1. advocate for the importance of arts and humanities within public health research, education, and practice;
  2. identify and work to overcome the barriers that prevent the integration of arts and humanities approaches into public health;
  3. facilitate stronger connections amongst arts and humanities professionals involved in public health, and between arts and humanities scholars and the wider public health community.

We adopt a broad understanding of the humanities which includes (but is not limited to) history, human geography, languages and linguistics, law, literary studies, philosophy, and theology, as well as  the visual and performing arts. We also understand public health in broad terms, to include any collective organised efforts to prevent illness and promote health at population level. Anyone interested in the intersection of humanities and public health is welcome to join the network, irrespective of professional or disciplinary background.

You can find out about our events and activities, join our mailing list or get in touch via email: janet.weston@lshtm.ac.uk – we’d love to hear from you.

The network is funded by the Wellcome Trust, as part of the University Award ‘Ethics and British public health law 1920-2020’.

Who we are
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Organising Group
Dr Janet Weston

Janet
Weston

Associate Professor

Janet Weston (LSHTM) is a historian of health and law, and Director of the Centre for History in Public Health. She is the Public Health Humanities Network lead at LSHTM.

Amanda Caleb

Professor

Amanda Caleb is professor of medical humanities at the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, Pennsylvania.

John Coggon

Professor

John Coggon is professor of law at the University of Bristol, researching the intersections of law, policy, and health, and ethics advisor to the World Health Organisation.

Hannah Elizabeth

Cultural Historian

Hannah Elizabeth is a cultural historian of sexuality, emotions, and childhood.

Allan González Estrada

Professor

Allan González Estrada is professor of philosophy and bioethics at Universidad Nactional Costa Rica.

Rebecca Garden

Associate Professor

Rebecca Garden is associate professor of public health at SUNY Upstate Medical University, with research expertise in literary studies and disability studies.

Thomas Hehlmann

Lecturer

Thomas Hehlmann is lecturer in public health and health literacy at the University of Bremen, developing the first health humanities course in Germany.

Adil Mohammed Javed

CEO and Artistic Director of Alchemy Arts

Adil Javed is CEO and Artistic Director of Alchemy Arts, a social enterprise aiming to empower communities through arts and creativity.

Haejoo Kim

Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature (Seoul National University)

Haejoo Kim is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at Seoul National University, with a focus on Victorian ‘alternative health’ practices and opposition to mainstream medicine.

Samia Latif

Public health consultant

Samia Latif is a public health consultant at the UK Health Security Agency, Assistant Academic Registrar at the UK Faculty of Public Health, and is passionate about promoting health through the arts. 

Gabriel Lawson

Research Associate

Gabriel Lawson is a Research Associate at the Policy Institute, King’s College London, working on policy relating to mental health. 

Conor Francis Macis

PhD candidate

Conor Macis is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Bristol, working on global health law and antimicrobial resistance. 

Gareth Millward is a historian of health and welfare policy at the University of Southern Denmark.

Michelle Moncrieffe is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Maryland, and leads the NAME Project which uses narrative research to address racism in dental care.

Manon Parry

Historian

Manon Parry is a historian of medicine at University of Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and an exhibition curator.

Savita Rani

Physician

Savita Rani is a physician training in public health and preventive medicine in Canada, with a personal visual arts and writing practice.

Mrs Harriet Ruysen

Harriet
Ruysen

Research Fellow

Hattie Ruysen is a midwife, researcher, and PhD candidate at LSHTM.

Lise Saffran

consultant and associate teaching professor

Lise Saffran is a consultant and associate teaching professor at the University of Missouri, with a background in public health and creative writing; narrative and storytelling.

Farhang Tahzib

Chair of UK Faculty of Public Health committee

Farhang Tahzib is the chair of UK Faculty of Public Health committee on ethics and law.

Carla Tsampiras

Senior Lecturer

Carla Tsampiras is a historian and Senior Lecturer in the Primary Health Care Directorate at the University of Cape Town.

Erica Nelson

Historian and Anthropologist

Erica is a historian and anthropologist with two decades of experience working on community-based public health, health systems development, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the politics of knowledge in health research.

Events
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Join our mailing list to find out about future events and activities as soon as they are announced.

Past events

Webinar: Arts and humanities for good public health

In partnership with the UK Faculty of Public Health, we hosted a roundtable addressing the importance of the arts and humanities within public health education and training in January 2024.

Watch the recording below.

You can also review some of the resources mentioned in the discussion and online chat. 

2023-24 Seminar Series: Historical perspectives on ethics, morals, and values in public health

Running from April 2023 to April 2024, these seminars featured scholars from around the world tackling everything from the quarantining of slave ships to the moral economy of the NHS:

Humanities and public health - an exploratory workshop 

Online, Monday 22 May 2023

The network held its inaugural workshop online on Monday 22 May 2023. This workshop brought together humanities researchers whose work engages with the issues, problems, or methods of public health, to discuss two main themes: the integration of humanities disciplines into public health research and practice, and the role of the humanities in public and community engagement and involvement.

Resources
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Here you can find further reading on the humanities and health, and links to our partners and other groups with similar interests.

BMJ Medical Humanities blog series

BMJ Medical Humanities is publishing a series of blogs by network members in summer 2024. We’ll add links here as they come out!

Further reading

Partners, friends of the network, and other groups and societies

Get involved
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Public health humanities reading group

Are you interested in joining an informal reading group, to discuss new or key texts and to meet other folks interested in public health and the humanities?

All welcome to join our new reading group, which launched in May 2024. Meetings in late 2024 will be on:

  • Tuesday 29 October
  • Tuesday 26 November

Meetings will take place online, with the option to join in person in London as well. To find out more, please get in touch with Conor Macis and Gabriel Lawson.

Teaching arts and humanities in public health: working groups

Small working groups are developing resources for arts and humanities education in public health. If you’re interested in this, please email Janet Weston

If you’d like to stay up to date with news of future activities and events, please join our mailing list!

Conferences and networking

We held a wonderful two day conference in 2024 in partnership with the Danish Institute of Advanced Study (and you can read more about that here). We would love to follow this up with more opportunities for meeting and sharing ideas and research in future. If your institution would be interested in hosting a meeting, or if you would like to organise something similar, please do get in touch via email: janet.weston@lshtm.ac.uk.

Case studies
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Here you can find some examples of public health projects that include (and sometimes centre) humanities methods and approaches.

Re-authoring meat consumption narratives: combining historical, cultural and public health perspectives

This project is a collaboration between researchers from the Humanities, Social and Behavioural, and Medical faculties at the University of Amsterdam. It harnesses the diverging areas of expertise to understand the predominant role of meat in past and contemporary diets. 

Find out more about this project (see under ‘Midsize projects)

Distorted transmission: AIDS, minority stress and understanding Dutch male homosexual minorities’ collective past

This project examines how the self-appreciation of (male) homosexual minorities in the Netherlands has been shaped by the HIV/AIDS-crisis of the 1980s. Recent literature on ‘minority stress’ demonstrates high (and rising) levels of mental health issues and suicide attempts among LGBTQ+ people despite improving social conditions. Through archival research and interviews with long-time HIV/AIDS survivors, this project brings together researchers from history and sociology to investigate how the collective experience of HIV/AIDS has affected homosexual men’s self-appreciation from the 1980s to present.

Read more information on the Distorted transmission project.

Questioning Vaccination Discourse

This project applies corpus-based discourse analysis to discussions about vaccinations in the UK national press, parliamentary debates, and social media, to gain a better understanding of how the public sees and understands vaccination. It brings together a range of experts in linguistics in partnership with Public Health England, the UK Department of Health and Social Care, and Department of Digital Culture Media & Sport, to inform future public health campaigns.

Read more information on the Questioning Vaccination Discourse project.

 

Conferences
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On 19 and 20 September 2024, the Public Health Humanities Network held a conference at the University of Southern Denmark. It gathered scholars from around the world at various career stages to share their work and think through the benefits and challenges of doing public health humanities research in the current academic environment. The event was hosted and supported by the Danish Institute for Advanced Study and the Wellcome Trust. 

Public Health in Humanities team at a conference, 2024

Over the course of the two days, we discussed topics as diverse as family planning ethnography in Ethiopia to using multimodal cultural studies reading techniques on Danish health advertisements, via the meaning of religious songs in Indian public health communication.

We discussed the difficulties in convincing institutions to support the interdisciplinary teaching and research that’s necessary to make this important work happen. And we saw how networks such as this one can help inside institutions, as well as getting our work out to other parties within and outside academia.

See the full programme, including presenter information and paper summaries. 

We would love to see more gatherings like this in future: if you would like to co-organise or host a similar meeting then please do get in touch via email: janet.weston@lshtm.ac.uk.