What the Grandmother Knew That the Law Did Not

Maria Teresa Marangoni considers how a universal biomedical paradigm collides with local cultural knowledge and historical memory in debates surrounding Veneto’s vaccine mandates.

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‘Figments: Madness, Health and Creativity’ Conference

Mila Daskalova, Julia Macintosh, Cheryl McGeachan, and Azra Khan organised the Figments: Madness, Health and Creativity Conference. In this piece, they reflect on how the conference unfolded, exami…

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Dr Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us — and How AI Could Save Lives | Book Review

Max Edward Perry reviews Charlotte Blease Dr Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us — and How AI Could Save Lives (Yale University Press, 2025), reflecting on its arguments in the context of today’s debates …

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Syndemic Thinking in The Clinical Witness

Caroline Williamson Sinalo reviews The Clinical Witness: Conflict, Catastrophe and Medical Testimony, engaging with the complex interconnectedness of contemporary crises and the moral ambiguities, …

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Miss Marple and the Quiet Art of Knowing

Loshini Rajentharan reflects on Miss Marple’s attentiveness to human nature, the concept of epistemic injustice, and the relevance of lived experience and pattern recognition to clinical judgement …

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What I know stays outside

Written in memory of her father, WAN Huan’s personal reflection explores her sudden loss to reveal how clinical knowledge breaks down within rigid hospital hierarchies, and why medicine requires hu…

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Queer methods of presence, proximity, and pressure

Susie Russell examines her experience of embodiment, relationality, and interdependence at the 2025 PhD School: Queer Methodologies in Medical Humanities.

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Book Review: Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach

Margarita Saona reviews Mary Roach’s “Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy,” where science, cyborgs, and animals come together as we think about the human body.

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Beyond Collaboration: The Quiet Rivalries of Medicine

Amr Ihab reflects on their experience of medical training and how cultures of competition and rivalries among medical professionals can be challenged through the medical humanities.

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Beyond Climate Data: The Role of Climate Affects in Politicising Climate Change

Benoit Dillet and Sophia Hatzisavvidou examine the role that climate data plays in overlooking and depoliticising lived experiences of climate anxiety.

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Consuming Diabetes: Advertising and Twentieth-Century Patient Organisations

Andrew Burchell examines what advertisements in patient organisation magazines reveal about medical consumerism and the globalisation of diabetes care.

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Narrating ‘Inherited’ Trauma: Reflections on World Literature and Epigenetics

Katrin Wehling-Giorgi reflects on a day of interdisciplinary dialogue at Durham’s Institute for Medical Humanities, 27 March 2026

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The Architecture of Suffering: Notes from a Johannesburg Trauma Ward

Louis Kennedy reflects on working at a public trauma hospital in Johannesburg, unpicking how it operates as a ‘sociostructural space of pain’.

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Co-Production and Physical Activity: Reflections from Research, Practice, and Lived Experience

Crystal Voyle, Michelle Pullen, and Kate Marks reflect on the key points raised at the Co-Production and Physical Activity event held at Durham University in March 2026.

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Visualising the Human and Historical Lives of Tobacco in India

Upendra Bhojani extends beyond public health and draws the historical, colonial, and social dimensions of tobacco use in India.

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Necessary Independence: Ableism in Natural Disaster Discourse

Lydia Chung illuminates the structural ableism in disaster response design.

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Reimagining Access: Self-Managed Abortion in India

Garima Shrivastava considers how self-managed abortion (SMA) in India unsettles simple ideas of access, drawing attention to the social, technological, and institutional conditions that shape exper…

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Metaphor Map for Psychiatric Experiences

Anita Wohlmann and Birgit Bundesen introduce us to the ‘Metaphor Map’- a way to help those express, listen to, and create meaning out of psychic experience.

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Bed Theory: The Bed as Site of Conditional Care

Sarah Boira introduces their Bed Theory, noticing the assumptions and borders of the seemingly mundane object of the bed.

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‘Mrs Average of the UK’ Makes Something of Her Menopause

Arlene Jackson’s reflective cyanotype prints allow the sun’s rays to transform a body dehumanised by sexist medical disbelief into ‘something extraordinary’.

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Glasgoscopy: Creative Writing as Reflective Practice

Vicki Husband uses her poetic perspective to reflect on the practice and pedagogy of occupational therapy in her book Glasgoscopy.

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Feeling Detached After a Traumatic Experience

Inspired by both personal history and intellectual curiosity, researcher Molly Scott examines the impact of bodily disconnect on responses to touch in those who have experienced trauma.

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Time of Mattering: Disidentification and Care in Small Rain

Marie Cuvelier explores how the temporal logics of hospitalisation are subtly resisted in Gareth Greenwell’s 2025 novel Small Rain.

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Stuck in Place: Reconstructing the University’s Mental Health Narrative

Bradford Stucki explores how the social construction of academic culture contributes to mental distress amongst University students and staff, and how the same processes can be directed towards car…

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Conference Review: The Senses and Medical Humanities

Arya Ray discusses new directions emerging from the one-day international workshop ‘The Senses and Medical Humanities,’ held at Durham University in February 2026.

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Borrowing Stories

Chris Bowlby considers the nature of legacy and grief as he reflects on preparing his son Ewan’s work for publication after his death.

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Drawing Distress: Mental Health and Social Worlds in Indian Digital Comics

Monesha L. and Sathyaraj Venkatesan examine how Indian digital comics frame mental health as a shared social condition, extending health humanities beyond the clinic and into the textures of everyd…

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‘Frail, Travelling Coincidences’: Philip Larkin, Hull and The Writing of Yiyun Li

Lucyl Harrison weaves together the poems and life of Larkin with train journeys taken by both her and the novelist Yiyun Li.

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Curating Entanglements: Art and the Future of the Critical Medical Humanities

Megha Manjari Mohanty reviews Art and the Critical Medical Humanities, edited by Fiona Johnstone, Allison Morehead, and Imogen Wiltshire (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026), exploring how the volume positi…

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The Language of “Lunacy” in Late Nineteenth-Century Egypt

Yasmin Shafei explores the language of nineteenth-century Egyptian citizens’ petitions and points to its significance for the development culturally sensitive mental health interventions today.

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