New Thinking: Ways of Talking about Health

Des Fitzgerald talks to the winners of the AHRC and Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Awards 2020. Each has looked at how the arts can help our understanding of health and wellbeing - and, includes research into how the stigma surrounding obesity contributes to the obesity crisis and innovative art therapy techniques with long term mental health benefits for patients.

AHRC and Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Awards 2020 • Best Research Award: The Hearing the Voice team at Durham University • Best Early Career Research Award: Dr Oli Williams, The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at Kings College London • Best International Award: Dr Dora Vargha, Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities, University of Exeter • Best Community Research Award: Laura Drysdale, Director of Restoration Trust • Leadership Award: Dr Victoria Bates, Senior Lecturer in Modern History (University of Bristol)

Angela Woods is Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at Durham University. Over the last eight years, her Hearing the Voice team has looked to help those who are distressed by their voices, to find out what those voices are like and why they happen, and to explore how hearing voices is an important and meaningful part of human experience.

Oli Williams is a postdoctoral fellow based at King’s College London. His doctoral research joins the dots between inequality, health, and everyday life. It demonstrates how the ‘war on obesity’ promotes stigma among people living in one of the most deprived areas in England.

Victoria Bates is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Bristol University. Her research expertise ranges from nineteenth-century forensic medicine to current-day sensory studies. She has recently focused on developing partnerships with creative professionals in healthcare settings.

Laura Drysdale is Director of the Restoration Trust. Since 2015 The Restoration Trust has partnered Norfolk Record Office and local mental health providers to run Change Minds, an archives and mental health programme. Over 15 three-hour sessions, a facilitated group of around 10 people investigate case records of patients in local 19th century asylums. They use this research as the basis for creative writing, art and theatre, leading to a shared public event.

And, Dora Vargha is Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter. Her research on the Cold War politics of polio epidemics in the 1950s places a crucial moment in global health history in its geopolitical context.

This episode was put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as part of our series New Thinking focusing on new research at UK universities.