Call for papers - Everyday Health and Wellbeing: New and Emerging Directions in the Health and Medical Humanities
University of Essex, 6-7 December 2024
Research on ‘everyday health’ constitutes a major emergent direction in the health and medical humanities. Studies of ‘everyday health’ centre on the experiences of ‘ordinary’ people in their daily lives, as they work, socialise, and pursue relationships, and the resources they draw on to make sense of the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that make up theirse of ‘health’. The perspective of ‘everyday health’ exists in contrast to scholarship that focuses on states, medical professionals, and other experts, and supplants top-down ways of seeing. ‘Everyday health’ is an inclusive and intersectional concept that considers how multiple aspects of identity (gender, sexuality, ‘race’, class, disability, and age) influence experiences of health and wellbeing. This approach attends to lived experience, embodiment, emotion, and subjectivity.
This in-person workshop (University of Essex) brings together doctoral students, early career researchers, and established scholars to share cutting-edge research on everyday health. The programme will include papers from doctoral students at CHASE institutions (open call) and from confirmed participants chosen for their interdisciplinary/intersectional research, to represent different career stages, and to provide doctoral students with connections across and beyond the UK. It incorporates masterclasses on public engagement and on creative research methods offered by former health and medical humanities researchers in careers outside academia.
The in-person workshop will be followed by four online sessions on different aspects of building a career in the health and medical humanities, to be held in January and February 2025.
This workshop is supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership and by Eastern ARC.
Masterclasses
Kate Mahoney (Healthwatch Essex) – ‘What and why do I research? Reflexive collage techniques’
Daisy Payling (University College London) – ‘Public engagement, impact, and the medical humanities’
Confirmed Speakers
Tracey Loughran (University of Essex), Gareth Millward (University of Southern Denmark), Karissa Robyn Patten (University of Edinburgh), Grace Redhead (University of Exeter), Beckie Rutherford (University of Warwick), Carol Tulloch (University of the Arts London), Whitney Wood (Vancouver Island University)
CALL FOR PAPERS
If you are a doctoral student and you would like to present your research at the workshop, please submit a title and abstract of no more than 500 words to Professor Tracey Loughran (t.loughran@essex.ac.uk) by 25 October 2024. Papers will be 20 minutes longer. Acceptance of papers will be confirmed by 1 November 2024.
REGISTRATION
Please contact Tracey Loughran (t.loughran@essex.ac.uk) to register. CHASE-funded students will be awarded priority in booking until 21 October. After this date, places for other doctoral students will be allocated, with those at CHASE institutions awarded priority until 4 November and subsequent places allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Registration closes 25 November. Please note that the workshop is in-person only.
Building a Career Within and Beyond the Health and Medical Humanities
Online, January-February 2025
These online sessions support doctoral students and early career researchers in building careers within and beyond opportunities. Each session includes short talks from experts in the field, with time for questions and discussion. Sessions are open to all.
These sessions are supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership and by Eastern ARC.
Career Opportunities Within and Beyond the Health and Medical Humanities
Monday 13 January, 6.00-7.30pm
Panellists: Gareth Millward (University of South Denmark), Kate Mahoney (Healthwatch Essex), Daisy Payling (University College London)
This session explores different possible careers for health and medical humanities doctoral students. Panellists are former doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers in the health and medical humanities who have developed careers within academia outside the UK, within research organisations in the voluntary sector, and in a professional services role within a university.
Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1024952930807?aff=oddtdtcreator
Applying for Postdoctoral Funding in the Health and Medical Humanities
Monday 27 January, 6.00-7.30pm
Panellists: Laura Kelly (University of Strathclyde), Tracey Loughran (University of Essex), Hazel Marzetti (University of Edinburgh)
This session introduces doctoral students to the main postdoctoral funding schemes for health and medical humanities researchers. It considers challenges in formulating postdoctoral research projects, what makes good research grant applications, and the practicalities of the application process. Panellists combine experience of review for major funding bodies and experience as recipients of health and medical humanities postdoctoral funding.
Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1024956300887?aff=oddtdtcreator
Publishing in the Health and Medical Humanities
Wednesday 12 February, 6.00-7.30pm
Panellists: David Cantor (Manchester University Press), Des Fitzgerald (Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork)
This session helps doctoral students think about where and how to pitch journal articles and book proposals, consider how the review process works and what it offers, and think through publishing plans. It especially considers how to place scholarship that does not have an obvious disciplinary ‘home’. The panellists have experience of writing, publishing, reviewing, and editing in the medical humanities.
Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1024959139377?aff=oddtdtcreator
Applying for Posts in the Health and Medical Humanities
Monday 24 February, 4.00-5.30pm
Panellists: Luna Dolezal (University of Exeter), Veronica Heney (Durham University)
This session helps doctoral students think about applying for academic posts that relate to the health and medical humanities. It considers how to look for posts related to the health and medical humanities, what interview committees are looking for in a rounded application, how to put together a good job application, and how to pitch expertise that lies at the intersection of different disciplines. Panellists speak from their differing experience of both sides of the process: applying for posts in the medical humanities, and assessing applications.
Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1024960553607?aff=oddtdtcreator