Doctor, writer, migrant, author: reflections on a journey

We warmly invite you to join us for the next event hosted by the IMH in collaboration with the Black Health and Humanities Network and Philosophy Department with Dr Ike Anya, a consultant in public health medicine, lecturer, and author.

This seminar will draw on Dr Anya’s recently-published medical memoir, Small by Small: Becoming a Doctor in 1990s Nigeria, which charts the triumphs and failures of his student days through to his first demanding year as a house officer against the backdrop of political unrest, social change, and a worsening economy in Nigeria. His talk will reflect on the form of the medical memoir and questions of race and place within medical and literary-publishing landscapes. You are very welcome to join us for dinner following the seminar at 7pm. If you would like to attend the dinner, please email a.s.thampuran@durham.ac.uk by 15 June.

Full abstract:

What implicit and explicit motivations led an 18 year old Nigerian boy leaving secondary school in the late 1980s to embark on the study of medicine? How did he go in six or seven years from a gauche, if well-read, teenager to a white coated medical officer confidently running a daily clinic at a medical centre seeing patients with a variety of ailments? At what point and on what basis did he begin to claim the title of writer? And how, following his journey from Nigeria to the UK, did he become a debut author, publishing a memoir about his training and first year in practice? In this seminar, I will endeavour to reflect, inviting participants to join me in reflecting on these questions and proffering possible answers to these questions, conscious of the challenges of curation and veracity in the presentation of self.

Bio:

Ike Anya is a consultant in public health medicine working in Nigeria and the UK, most recently leading the implementation of a national multiagency program in Scotland. An honorary lecturer in public health at Imperial College, he also teaches at Bristol University & the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. A 2007 TED Global Fellow, he co-founded Nigeria Health Watch, EpiAfric, TEDxEuston & the Abuja Literary Society. An advisory council member of the AKO Caine Prize, his work has appeared in various academic journals & in The Guardian, Huffington Post, Granta, Catapult & Eclectica. the anthology of essays by Nigerian writers on Nigeria: Of This Our Country. Co-editor of The Weaverbird Collection of New Nigerian Writing, he has an MA in Creative Non-Fiction from UEA. Small By Small, his memoir about becoming a doctor in 1990s Nigeria was published in May 2023 by Sandstone Press.

www.epiafric.com

http://nigeriahealthwatch.com/

www.tedxeuston.com

Twitter: @ikeanya