Ethics, reflexivity, and writing in the medical humanities

28th – 30th June 2021 | Online

This three-day workshop offers an intensive training opportunity for doctoral researchers at all levels and across disciplines whose PhD work relates to the medical humanities, broadly conceived. By bringing together established scholars and doctoral researchers, it aims to open on-going interdisciplinary conversations around ethics, reflexivity, and writing in the medical humanities, with a view to equipping students to more sensitively engage with these often difficult aspects of their research which seldom are an explicit or sustained focus of doctoral training. In particular, the workshop will create a space in which doctoral researchers can discuss strategies developed and deployed across different disciplines for working with different and sensitive sources, subjects, and stories, both in terms of intellectual methodology and in terms of self-care. As well as facilitating interdisciplinary exchange, this workshop will also foster reflection on the potential audiences of research in the medical humanities, including communicating research beyond specialist audiences in the humanities, and through creative writing.

Over the course of the workshop, students will participate in seminars on ethics, reflexivity, and writing in the medical humanities, which will be delivered by invited expert speakers from a range of disciplines. Participating students will also be invited to circulate work-in-progress to the rest of the group, for discussion and feedback from peers and the organisers of the workshop. Built into the workshop will be plenty of opportunities for informal conversation and networking, with a view to creating future collaborative relationships and support networks for emerging scholars.

This workshop is coordinated by Dr Chris Sandal-Wilson (University of East Anglia), Dr Sarah Marks (Birkbeck, University of London), and Professor Gordon Lynch (University of Kent).

For more information about the workshop’s aims and programme, you can watch this short promotional video by the three co-organisers.

Accommodation and refreshments will be covered for all workshop participants. CHASE funded students are encouraged to use their CHASE funding to cover any travel costs. Please email enquiries@chase.ac.uk for any queries about travel expenses.

The organisers plan for this three-day workshop to take place in Bloomsbury in central London, with accommodation for two nights nearby included for participating students. While we are cautiously optimistic that by the end of June 2021 it may be possible for this workshop to go ahead in person, we recognise that the situation is still uncertain and that individual circumstances may also vary significantly. We encourage anyone with concerns to get in touch with us, preferably sooner rather than later; as well as accommodating individuals who wish to participate remotely, we are prepared to be flexible and to move the workshop online-only should it become necessary. We will monitor the situation closely and keep participants updated in a timely manner.

Attendance is capped at twelve doctoral candidates, to ensure appropriate time is given for the discussion of individual submitted work-in-progress over the course of the workshop. The deadline for expressions of interest is 1 April 2021.