Medicine is not only located in the hospital, the laboratory, or the clinic.
The Medical Humanities Research Lab approaches medicine in its varied locations and knowledges that ripple through people’s lives.
Our work examines formal and informal sites of medicine, health, and care.
With strong interdisciplinary expertise and capabilities, the Medical Humanities Research Lab aims to place medicine in its social, cultural, historical, and ethical contexts through engagement activities with industry partners, healthcare professionals, and the broader community.
Our research on human-medicine interactions develops critical insights into the social, cultural, and ethical contexts of medicine, including the historical dimensions of medical practice and its connected institutions, and the lived experiences of health and illness. The Lab acknowledges the importance of unpacking the complex and nuanced relationships between patients and doctors, illness and care, and medical and lay knowledge, to create and disseminate impactful research that will improve people’s experiences in the healthcare sector.
Our Research
Our research covers five interlocking areas.
History of Minds, Bodies, and the Senses is concerned with how historical and contemporary knowledge and practices in medicine impact understandings of the human body and its illnesses, and how these are constituted by social and cultural dimensions such as gender and sexuality.
Life, Death, and Illness examines experiences of health and illness across the life course, including from before the beginning of life to beyond the grave.
Decolonising Healthcare highlights the health effects of ongoing colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and the socio-economic inequalities that circulate in human-medicine interactions.
Technology, Health, and Digital Life explores how digitalisation transforms both the practice of medicine, and how health is experienced in everyday life.
Medicine, Care, and the Environment illuminates the impacts of climate change on health and wellbeing, including the displacement of people, heat-related illness and death, and the interconnected impacts on humans and animals.
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Contact
If you’d like to get in touch, please email Jacinthe Flore .
Banner image: Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Credit: Pulmonary artery cells. Kevin Mackenzie, University of Aberdeen. Source:
Wellcome Collection.
Dr Jacinthe Flore
Paige Donaghy
A/Prof Brendan Churchill
Dr Charlotte Indermaur Denniston
Ana Eclair
Dr Maria Karidakis
Dr Jaya Keaney
Dr Kerstin Knight
Prof Birgit Lang
Elizabeth MacFarlane
Andrew May
Dr Fallon Mody
Prof Tim Parkin
Dr Xin Pei
Dr Joshua Pocius
A/Prof Gyorgy Scrinis
Prof Meredith Temple-Smith
A/Prof Nicholas Van Dam
Dr Sarah Walsh
Mark Bo Chen
Zoe Cosker
Christopher Orrell
Poornima Sardana
Thomas Spiteri
Details coming soon! Stay tuned!