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Centre for Medical Humanities

  • About CMH

    About CMH

  • Research

    Research

    • Hearing the Voice

      ‘Hearing the Voice’ continues innovative work in exploring the experience of voice hearing through unique insights from the humanities and social sciences.

    • Hubbub

      Hubbub aims to explore the dynamics of rest, noise, tumult, activity and work, as they operate in mental health, neuroscience, the arts and the everyday.

    • Life of Breath

      Studying the unexplored richness of breath in culture and then bringing this richness to the clinic.

    • New Generations

      Interdisciplinary skills development for medical humanities

    • Wandering Minds

      Mind wandering is today positioned as key to understanding many aspects of human cognition and psychological wellbeing.

    • What Works Centre for Wellbeing

      Sarah Atkinson leads the Durham partnership.

  • Resources

    Resources

Welcome to the Centre for Medical Humanities

The critical medical humanities explores the entanglement of science with humanities and social science, situating the social, cultural and political problematics of health within a long cultural perspective. Durham’s Centre for Medical Humanities (CMH) is at the forefront of this field. Founded in 2000, CMH currently supports two large-scale interdisciplinary research projects, Hearing the Voice and Life of Breath, funded by the Wellcome Trust, and has recently completed a third, Hubbub. Our work draws on a vibrant cross-faculty community of established and emerging researchers, and a strong network of partners beyond the academy, including the World Health Organisation, the Medical Royal Colleges, NHS Trusts, health charities, service users, activist groups, arts in health practitioners, and national arts organisations.

We welcome inquiries from postgraduate students interested in the Medical Humanities. Please visit the profiles of our Academic Staff for research interests and contact them directly.

Hearing the Voice

Life of Breath

 
 

News and events:

News

Centre for Medical Humanities wins Wellcome Trust Award

CMH has been awarded a Discretionary Grant of just over £1m for five years from the Wellcome Trust to support our future development. The grant is in recognition of the Centre’s current prominence and leadership in medical humanities research. Read more.

Hearing the Voice

Hearing the Voice has teamed up with Waddington Street Community Centre to produce a new, four-part series of events exploring voice-hearing and other unusual experiences. Next event: Living with Voices, 5-7pm 10 May, an interactive session for sharing coping strategies for voice-hearing. Read more.

Research Highlights

4 new Project Shorts published for Working Knowledge

Following a British Academy and Wellcome-funded workshop on Collaboration in the Critical Medical Humanities held in Durham in September 2017, four new Project Shorts have been published as Working Knowledge resources. Read more.

Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities

This volume is co-edited by members of CMH's directorial team, and prominently features research by a number of CMH colleagues and affiliates. Read more.

Events

Registration OPEN for 25 Years of Madness and Modernism - Fri 11 May, Priors' Hall, Durham Cathedral

A symposium will be held in Durham to celebrate the significance and wide-ranging influence of Madness and Modernism by Louis A. Sass, distinguished clinical psychologist and phenomenologist of psychopathology. Read more.

PG/ECR Network - Tues 22 May

Dr James Stark (University of Leeds) will giving a talk ‘“Ceaseless is Madame’s fight against the ravages of Old Man Time”: Ageing and Agelessness in Interwar Britain’. All welcome - please contact Natalie Riley if you would like to attend. 22 May Collier Room, Hild Bede College, Durham 5-7pm. Read more.

Contact Details

Centre for Medical Humanities
Caedmon Building
Leazes Road
Durham
DH1 1SZ

Tel: +44 (0)191 33 48277
Email: mail.cmh@durham.ac.uk