The Institute for Medical Humanities coordinates and supports research on the lived experience of health and illness, with a focus on what we call ‘hidden experience’.
These experiences are easy to hide, but difficult to comprehend, explain or get help for. We believe a medical humanities approach can shed new light on these hidden experiences to improve health policy and practice and benefit the lives of communities and individuals.
Through interdisciplinary investigations spanning all three university faculties and drawing in colleagues from English Studies, Theology, History, Geography, Anthropology, Sociology, Sport and Exercise Science and Psychology, among others, we are developing and expanding research projects on topics including trauma, post-natal depression, addiction, deafness, dreams, hallucinations, touch, memory, weather, menopause, and anxiety.
We are generously supported by Wellcome as a centre for excellence in the study of health through the humanities and social sciences, and we collaborate closely with similar centres in Edinburgh, Exeter and Oxford.
Please get involved in our work - join our mailing list or follow us on Twitter for the latest updates and opportunities.
We're a collaboration of 44 specialist centres, academies and projects, with over 40 undergraduate courses and postgraduate programmes. Unbound from clinic, we frame health differently. Our vision for health is for people to thrive in the places they live.
For general enquiries, please contact us by email.
Durham University
Confluence Building
Lower Mountjoy
Stockton Road
Durham
DH1 3LE
T. +44 (0)191 334 8277