Close
Narrative and the discovery of “culture” 1980-1995
06 February 2025, 6:15 pm–7:30 pm
UCL Health Humanities Centre is pleased to welcome Professor Neil Vickers for the second in a series of three lectures on the history of the health/medical humanities.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Organiser
-
Institute of Advanced Studies
Location
-
Garwood Lecture Theatre1st Floor, South WingUCL, Gower St, LondonWC1E 6BTUnited Kingdom
In these lectures, we want to explore a subject that is seldom mentioned and often dismissed: the history of the medical humanities. Where did they come from? What relation do they bear to other fields? What were the turning points in their history? What do they tell us about the modern university? Above all, we want to consider whether and on what terms they are likely to survive.
Part 1, 23 January 2025
“In the beginning was the chaplaincy”: the religious origins of the medical humanities, 1960-1980.
Part 2, 6 February 2025
Narrative and the discovery of “culture” 1980-1995.
Part 3, 27 February 2025
The health humanities, the critical medical humanities and the future of the field.
All welcome but please register to attend: https://ucl-healthhumanities-vickers.eventbrite.co.uk
This event has been organised by the UCL Health Humanities Centre at the Institute of Advanced Studies. The Centre draws together staff from different disciplines, departments and faculties engaged in teaching and research on matters relating to health, illness and well-being.
Image credit: Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash
About the Speaker
Professor Neil Vickers
Co-Director of the Centre for the Humanities and Health at Dept of English, Kings College London
My current research lies exclusively in the health humanities. My latest book (co-authored with Derek Bolton), Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and Abandonment, will be published in the summer of 2024 by Reaktion Books. It is about what major illness does to social belonging in the WEIRD world (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic). Drawing on social neuroscience, group psychology, psychoanalysis, infant research, disability theory and microsociology, we offer a psychobiological account of relations between the healthy and the ill in contemporary Western societies that highlights the creative power of care and the devastation of abandonment.
I am currently co-editing (with Patrick ffrench and Céline Lefève) a special number of the History of the Human Sciences on the history of the medical humanities, which is also the subject of a book I am writing.
I have a strong interest in the history of the Psy disciplines – but most especially the British psychoanalytic tradition – and their relation to concepts of health and illness more generally.
More about Professor Neil Vickers