Professor Angela Woods, Director of the Institute for Medical Humanities (IMH) and a Professor of Medical Humanities in our Department of English Studies, has been awarded an honorary doctorate by Linköping University.
The Swedish university has honoured Professor Woods for her contribution to medical humanities – her transformative research and facilitative leadership.
Angela is Director of one of the world’s largest medical humanities institutes and of the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities.
Her work is characterised by a vision for how medical humanities can be significant within the academic community and in healthcare.
Her research combines medical humanities with critical theory as a generative force and challenges the conditions for interdisciplinary health research.
Linköping cite the following reasons for honouring Angela with this award: she has widened the reach of the field, worked on issues of diversity and inclusion, and created an ambitious programme to strengthen the medical humanities globally, based on these values.
She has also engaged with health concerns in communities local to Durham.
Angela and the IMH have long collaborated with Linköping’s Centre for Medical Humanities and Bioethics.
The partnership includes a major project on epistemology and post-Covid led by Professor Kristin Zeiler, a joint doctoral research school and a vibrant visiting researcher exchange programme.
Angela is being honoured alongside Jason Huang, CEO of Nvidia; Andreas Norlen, speaker of the Rijksdag in Sweden; and Gillian Einstein, Professor of Psyhcology at the University of Toronto, Canada.
She will receive her honorary doctorate later in May 2025. While in Sweden, Angela will give a special lecture entitled ‘The narrative futures of healthcare’. A recording will be made available afterwards on the Linkoping website.
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