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University of Essex homepage About Faculty of Arts and Humanities Research Health and Medical Humanities
Research Area

Health and Medical Humanities

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Understanding health, medicine and well-being

Health and Medical humanities is an emerging interdisciplinary field that incorporates the arts and humanities and the social sciences, and their application to understandings of medicine, health and well-being.

The distinctive strengths of health and medical humanities at Essex are an emphasis on the politicised dimensions of power and agency in everyday life, especially the differentiation of experiences according to gender, ‘race’, sexuality and age, and belief in the importance of applied practice to change individual experiences and social awareness of health and illness.

Our work in health and medical humanities clusters around three main themes: autonomy and rights; representation and experience; and embodiment and emotion. These core themes are pursued across disciplines including art history and history; drama, theatre and film studies; law and human rights; literature and creative writing; and philosophy.

Autonomy and rights

Scholars interested in autonomy and rights make creative interventions to increase well-being in, and amplify the voices of, socially and politically marginalised groups; seek to clarify concepts such as ‘decision-making capacity’, ‘will’, ‘ableness’ and ‘empowerment’ with a view to improving healthcare policy and practice; and aim to understand the relationship between health and human rights in global context in order to foster new approaches to accountability at state level.

Representation and experience

Those exploring representation and experience want to understand how texts, images and objects have shaped self-perception and social attitudes in societies past and present; to consider the different contexts and means of articulating knowledge about health and illness, with particular emphasis on whose experiences are privileged in public discourse, and why; and to create methods for narrativising experience that can bring the human into medical discourse in new and unexpected ways.

Embodiment and emotion

Those concerned with embodiment and emotion examine the effects of medical abuse and violence in diverse contexts, including courtrooms, birthing spaces and battlefields; seek to illuminate patient, practitioner and carer experiences such as powerlessness and anxiety in order to help people identify, understand and better cope with what is happening to them; and open out new techniques and spaces for empathy, healing and change.

Our members

Academic staff members working in health and medical humanities come from a range of disciplines. 

Department of History

Professor Tracey Loughran
Professor Tracey Loughran

Reader

Department of History , University of Essex

Gender; embodiment; psychology; trauma; illness narratives.
Dr Lisa Smith
Dr Lisa Smith

Lecturer

Department of History, University of Essex

Gender; reproduction; embodiment; early modern recipes.
Dr Xun Zhou
Dr Xun Zhou

Reader

Department of History, University of Essex

History of Jewish people in Asia; social history of drugs; social history of modern China; history of diseases, environmental history
Professor Lucy Noakes
Professor Lucy Noakes

Professor

Department of History, University of Essex

The First and Second World Wars; death, grief and commemoration; legacies of warfare; gender and war; cultural memory; emotional histories and 20th century Britain; public history.

Essex Law School

Dr Karen Brennan
Senior Lecturer, Essex Law School
Research interests: Criminal Law and Criminal Justice; Gender and Criminal Justice; Criminal Justice History
Dr Nikhil Gokani
Lecturer, Essex Law School
Research interests: Public Health Law; Consumer Protection; Food, Nutrition and Alcohol Labelling; Non-Communicable Diseases Prevention; Health Inequalities; Human Rights; Food, Tobacco, Alcohol, Physical Activity, Air Pollution
Julie Hannah
Lecturer, Essex Law School
Professor Paul Hunt
Professor, Essex Law School
Research interests: International human rights law; Economic, social and cultural rights; The right to the highest attainable standard of health; Poverty, development and human rights
Dr Rees Johnson
Lecturer, Essex Law School
Dr Emmanuelle Lemaire
Lecturer, Essex Law School
Research interests: Comparative Law, Tort Law, French Law, English Law
Professor Yseult Marique
Professor, Essex Law School
Research interests: Regulation and administrative law, especially public-private relationships; Public contracts (procurement, enforcement, corruption); European administrative law; Constitutional and Administrative Justice Initiative; Comparative Law in Europe
Professor Onyeka Osuji
Dean of Essex Law School - Professor (R), Essex Law School
Research interests: Corporate Governance; Corporate Social Responsibility; Consumer Protection; Development; Corporate Regulation

Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies

Professor Katharine Cockin
Professor Katharine Cockin

Professor

Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Female doctors; medical women; gender and medical education; political activism.
Professor Susan Oliver
Professor Susan Oliver

Deputy Dean (Research) (Humanities) and Professor

Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Literature of the late 18th century and Romantic period, transatlantic studies, Scottish literature, ecocriticism and environmental writing and periodical culture.
Dr Sean Seeger
Dr Sean Seeger

Lecturer

Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Twentieth-century literature; modernism; speculative/science fiction; utopian studies
Nic Blower
Nic Blower

Lecturer

Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Fiction and documentary filmmaking
Dr Annecy Lax
Dr Annecy Lax

Senior Lecturer (Deputy Dean Postgraduate Research Training)

Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Women making theatre for social change; protesting through performance; British theatre and human rights discourse
Dr Mary Mazzilli
Dr Mary Mazzilli

Senior Lecturer

Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Chinese and East Asian theatre; world and global theatres and literatures; post-war British theatres in Europe
Dr James Canton
Dr James Canton

Senior Lecturer

Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Creative non-fiction; ecocriticism; travel writing and theory; the interface between colonial history and postcolonialism

East 15

Dr Christina Kapadocha
Dr Christina Kapadocha

Lecturer

East 15 Acting School, University of Essex

Somatic, healing, catharsis, witnessing, interrelation.
Dr Eirini Kartsaki
Dr Eirini Kartsaki

Lecturer

East 15 Acting School, University of Essex

Feminist performance and live art; repetition; weirdness

School of Philosophy and Art History

Dr Daniel Watts
Dr Daniel Watts

Senior Lecturer

School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Disease, narrativisation, clinicalisation, therapeutic, care.
Professor Wayne Martin
Professor Wayne Martin

Professor

School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Philosophy of psychiatry; phenomenology; autonomy and the regulation of care.
Professor Beatrice Han-Pile
Professor Beatrice Han-Pile

Professor

School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Medio-passivity; powerlessness; Foucault; phenomenology.
Dr Natasha Ruiz-Gomez
Dr Natasha Ruiz-Gomez

Senior Lecturer

School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Charcot, Salpêtrière, Paul Richer, pathology, scientific artworks, hysteria.
Dr Matthew Burch
Dr Matthew Burch

Lecturer

School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Phenomenology; action theory; cognitive and social sciences
Professor Fabian Freyenhagen
Professor Fabian Freyenhagen

Professor

School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Theory, history and practice of autonomy; ethics; political philosophy
Dr Joerg Schaub
Dr Joerg Schaub

Senior Lecturer

School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Social and political philosophy; Frankfurt School and contemporary critical theory; aesthetic and politics
Professor Irene McMullin
Professor Irene McMullin

Professor

School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Existentialism; phenomenology; ethics; moral psychology; social/political; aesthetics

Postgraduate Research students

Constantin Mehmel
Constantin Mehmel

Postgraduate Research Student

School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Phenomenology, disorientation, social life, interpersonal relationships.
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