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Five photographs of speakers in tear drop frames on multi-coloured background.

Announcing the new Hidden Experience Seminar Series from the Institute for Medical Humanities.

Memory. Queer theory. Self-help. Disability studies. Trauma. 

These are just some of the topics to be explored in the latest series of hybrid seminars from IMH, which will run from October 2023 to June 2024. 

The IMH Hidden Experience seminar series celebrates the work of six interdisciplinary research strands – embodied symptoms, thinking, feeling, imagining, fringe cognition, everyday environments, the science of human experience, and critical concepts – that have underpinned our seven-year Wellcome Development Award (2017-2024). Exploring invisible, marginalised, difficult, unspeakable or unacknowledged experiences of health and illness, the series is both a culmination of the Development Award and a herald of things to come as we begin work on our new Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities (DRP-MH).

 

How to register: 

Seminars will take place simultaneously at Durham University venues and online, with wine and nibbles available for those attending in-person. 

Attendance is free, but we ask that you reserve your space via Eventbrite using the links below. 

We will be announcing more speakers in the coming months, so keep an eye out for fresh announcements via our newsletter, social media accounts and website.

 

Confirmed speakers: 

What queer theory might teach us about interdisciplinary collaboration 

TO BE RESCHEDULED | IMH Durham 

Join Professor Felicity Callard as she considers how her long-standing engagement with queer theory affects her thoughts on - and practice of - interdisciplinarity, with a focus on specific overlapping problematics. 

Hosted by Critical Concepts

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The biopedagogies of sugar: Self-knowledge, intervention and the fantasy of liberation 

15 November 2023 (4-6PM GMT) | IMH Durham 

Drawing on self-help literature and newspaper “hidden sugar shock” stories, Professor Karen Throsby explores how - within the self-help domain - giving up sugar is never simply a benign health intervention, but also an act which both renders invisible and actively exacerbates social inequalities.

Hosted by Embodied Symptoms

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Medical Humanities and Disability Studies 

28 November 2023 (4.30-6PM GMT) | Durham University Business School 

An evening of conversation and provocation to launch Professor Stuart Murray’s new book In/Disciplines, a landmark examination of the relationship between medical humanities and disability studies. 

Hosted by Critical Concepts

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The subjective experience of remembering

10 January 2024 (4-6PM GMT) | IMH Durham 

Taking inspiration from philosophers and novelists, Professor Jon Simons considers the latest evidence on remembering from functional neuroimaging and studies of patients with neurological and psychiatric conditions.

Hosted by Science of Human Experience.

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Is there a history of the nocebo effect? Global reflections

28 February 2024 (4-6PM GMT) | IMH Durham 

How can historians make sense of collective traumas like mass sociogenic illness or reactive psychological disaster syndrome? Dr Rob Boddice puts the case for a history of the nocebo effect and the power of situated belief to cause real and lasting harm. 

Hosted by Thinking, Feeling, Imagining