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Jacob Fabrikant Creative Fellowship in Health Humanities

22 January 2025

The UCL Centre for Health Humanities, together with The Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at UCL’s Bloomsbury campus is seeking a creative fellow to work with us in Spring 2025.

two women finger painting, img credit UCL ISD Digital Media

The Jacob Fabrikant Creative Fellowship invites an artist or writer to work with the members and students of the centre to develop their creative practice on a theme related to the health humanities.

The Creative Fellowships award

This year we are offering one grant of £5,000 to work on a project linked to one of our core research themes. The programme aims to explore how creative practice operates as a form of knowing, exploring or discovering issues related to health and illness. For our Fellowships, we are looking for creative practitioners who are excited about exploring, through their own creative practice, one of the following themes:

  • Care and distressThis theme asks how the arts can provide understandings of mental distress, care-giving, and experiences of the health and social care services. It is particularly interested in feminist and disability-led perspectives.
  • Histories of the mind and of the psychological disciplinesThis theme asks how psychological disciplines, such as psychology, psychiatry and psycho analysis have developed over time. Projects might engage with the work of a specific historical figure, method, institution or diagnosis as a starting point for creative practice.
  • Philosophy, health and ethics: This research theme explores experiential and normative questions about health and illness. Projects may offer novel ways of articulating and communicating experiences of illness, or explore creative ways of improving ethical decision-making.

The programme is broadly focused on the fields of performance, creative writing, visual arts or media.

The appointed Fellows will be asked to respond creatively to the themes above and then to plan and deliver at least two events aimed at staff or students at UCL, and, as appropriate, a wider public. These could be seminars, creative workshops, performance events or any other encounter that allows people to collaborate in exploring creativity.  We expect these events to take place in term time, i.e. March-mid June 2025.

What we are looking for

We are looking for creative practitioners from any field who are interested in working within a university context for a period of time, to explore with researchers and students at UCL their shared interests in the value of the ‘creative health humanities’.

We are particularly interested in working with practitioners who may not have any prior experience of working with a university and are committed to providing support to help the Fellow to navigate our university ‘walls’ and engage meaningfully with our communities.

I think the openness and willingness to get involved is key; taking part in IAS seminars was the thing that I found most daunting, but it was the biggest surprise to me, how beneficial that was. The close scrutiny and attention of fellow researchers to one's work, was/is challenging at first but ultimately a really special experience.  Nicola Baldwin, Playwright and UCL Creative Fellow 2019-20

As someone who usually operates adjacent to or on the fringes of academia, the opportunity work closely with faculty for a sustained period of time has extended the parameters of my practice in an exciting way. What has been of particular benefit has been collaborative encounters with academics who don't just have a different way of working, but a different way of thinking, encouraging me to approach problems from different conceptual starting points, rather than just different formats or contexts.  Simon Farid, Creative Fellow and Visiting Research Fellow 2022-23

Timeframe

Completed applications should be submitted by midnight on Sunday 16 February 2025. Fellowships would be expected to start in early March 2025 and should conclude by 31 July 2025. The exact dates will be agreed at appointment stage. 

To apply

Please complete and submit an Expression of Interest Form along with your CV to lucy.stagg@ucl.ac.uk by midnight on Sunday 16 February. In addition, you may also send a link to your digital portfolio/website.

Find out more about UCL Creative Fellowships:

This creative fellowship is made in memory Professor Jacob I Fabrikant of the University of California Berkley. Fabrikant (1928-1993) was a pioneer in radiosurgery.