27 Feb 2024 – Work in Progress and Methods Exchange
Work in Progress and Methods Exchange Event, online, 27 February, 10am-12pm UK time.
10-11
- Lorraine Ryan, University of Birmingham: ‘Post-Partum Depression in Carmen Laforet’s Nada’
- Paula Muhr, University of Zurich: ‘Exploring the epistemic risks and benefits of using visual recordings of functional seizures (historically known as hysterical attacks) in present-day diagnostic encounters.’
11-12
Methods Exchange
Open to everyone, but focused as a venue for new, recently employed, precarious, independent and/or lived and living experience researchers, creatives and practitioners.
18 May 2023 – Hybrid Event at The Exchange, Birmingham and online
Supported by the British Academy ECR Network, a workshop was held by Drs Rebecca Wynter and Christina Wilkins on 18 May 2023, and was designed to help establish an ECR Network in Mental Health Humanities. The day allowed for ECRs to present their areas of research, collaborate with others, hear from keynote speakers (Matthew Broome, Head of Mental Health Humanities Network at Birmingham, and Lucienne Spencer, involved with the Phenomenological Psychopathology project funded by the Wellcome Trust), and take part in a roundtable exploring the potential aims of the network. The idea was to construct a set of guidelines for the network going forward. The second event, on 30 June 2023, functioned as the launch for the network.
The Medical Humanities has developed rapidly since initial explorations in the late twentieth century. As it grew, it was problematized, with some scholars preferring to identify as residing in the Health Humanities. More recently, there have been calls for a critical medical humanities, which instead focuses on the potential of what such scholarship might do. Traditionally an area of greater contestation and resistance to medicalisation, mental health has not always been well-served by being bundled together with the physical within healthcare systems, and therefore potentially within the disciplines that study them. In 2020, a Medical Health Humanities (MHH) research cluster was established, led by the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Mental Health, and embedding historians, philosophers, anthropologists, and literature, sexuality and gender researchers.
This one-day workshop and follow-up meeting were designed to ask questions around two key areas:
- What is gained by ECRs considering the Mental Health Humanities? What does Mental Health Humanities mean to ECRs?
- How might a dedicated Network serve ECRs? How could a Network shape the field?
Through collaborative thinking and discussions, we aimed together to produce a working document that might inform the development of Mental Health Humanities and with it a Network for ECR scholars [link to page with document].
30 June 2023 – Launch Event – Hybrid Event at Edgbaston Park Hotel and online
This second event followed the progress made at our initial May meeting.
The two-hour research showcase and launch event on 30 June at the University of Birmingham opened with an introduction from the network organisers, Rebecca and Christina. There was an opening talk from [?] as well as a series of lightning talks that looked towards expanding the network and embracing new researchers in the field. The programme also included the soft launch of the Network working document which was discussed and edited at the event [include link here to the page with the document on].
An overview of the guiding principles of the group was given and feedback taken into account. This was a hybrid event that allowed for key connections to be made between researchers in the field.
