International Health Humanities Network Membership

Claire Hansen is a Lecturer in English at ANU. She is also a researcher on the Shakespeare Reloaded project and holds an honorary virtual Fellowship with the Centre for History of Emotions (2022). Her research interests include Shakespeare and early modern drama, ecocriticism, the blue humanities and the health humanities. She is a co-chair of the Blue Humanities Lab and a co-founder of the health humanities project, The Heart of the Matter. Claire’s current project explores place-based approaches to Shakespeare and her second book, Shakespeare and Place-Based Learning, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

Current and Future Research

I am currently finishing an interdisciplinary PhD at The University of Nottingham. My project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. My thesis investigates how the belonging and otherness of queer women is represented in terms of space and time in British and German film and television since 2000.

My forthcoming post-doctoral project Freak Feminism: Madness and Non-normative Bodies in the work of Emilie Autumn and Amanda Palmer analyses these artists’ songs, stage performances, music videos, publications, as well as photographs and interviews to investigate the (self) representation of madness and the non-normative body from queer and feminist perspectives. In particular, I wish to focus on the themes of the asylum, (circus) ‘freaks’ and acts of revenge.

Research interests:

• Queer and feminist representations of madness: ‘freaks’, asylums and acts of revenge
• German cinema (in particular: gender and sexuality; the New German Cinema; Heimat; left-wing terrorism)
• Heritage film and television and heritage aesthetics
• Home Studies and representations of home
• Gender and Sexuality Studies
• Representations of the body (in particular: spatial representations of the body; the non-normative body; ‘freaks’)
• Queer belonging and otherness in British and German film and television

For more information visit: http://nottingham.academia.edu/RebeccaHarper

I work in medical education in a regional site of Monash University, Australia. We have medical students in their clinical years and I am interested in how humanities links with improving clinical practice, particularly in the areas of communication.

In my professional role as grants consultant for the Indiana Prevention Resource Center at Indiana University, Bloomington, I consuly with community and state organizations on planning and proposal development for substance abuse prevention and health promotion. In my personal life, I'm involved in photography and video production, especially for community and musical events. I'm currently working on a documentary on the 20th century classical music composer, Walter Piston, and his involvement with the Congregation of the Arts at Darmouth College (1963-1969)

Lara Hazelton is a practicing psychiatrist in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and an Associate Professor with the Dalhousie Department of Psychiatry.  She is the Humanities Coordinator within the Department of Psychiatry, and acts as a liaison with the Medical Humanities Program at Dahousie Medical School.  Dr. Hazelton is interested in medical education, and is currently completing her Masters of Education.  In 2012, she received a Medical Education Fellowship from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada to support her thesis research on teaching professionalism to residents.  She enjoys writing creatively, and has published a number of reflective essays in journals such as the Canadian Medical Association and trade publications like Canada's Medical Post.  She has also authored or co-authored peer-reviewed articles on narrative in medicine, medical ethics, psychotherapy, and anatomical sciences education.  She sings alto in the Dalhousie Health Sciences choir.

I have been a teacher of music for thirty years, having spent much of that time in leadership positions, including two headships and a role in Aberdeenshire Education Service with responsibility for School Improvement and Quality Assurance,  which involved, amongst other responsibilities, monitoring and supporting the work of the County Instrumental Music Service; I am now an educational consultant and private tutor of singing, violin and english language for a range of purposes, but before that was team leader for Language and Literacy at Plymouth University. My main aim is to enable people to reach their potential and overcome barriers to achievement such as anxiety and low self- esteem.

I have taken a range of diplomas in Counselling, Psychotherapy, Clinical Hypnotherapy, Mental Health and Social Work, Anatomy and Physiology and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, all of which I am able to utilise in supporting my clients in the pursuit of their goals, whether those be musical, academic or personal. I also enjoy painting with acrylics and textures and have my own online gallery in which I exhibit my abstract artwork.

I have played the violin since I was eight years old and been a member of numerous orchestras, including a stint as the co-leader of Sheffield Symphony Orchestra and the leader of my own string quartet which regularly played for weddings and other special occasions. My passion for singing developed through my involvement in choral singing and my interest in opera during my time as a music student at Huddersfield Music College, where I was fortunate enough to receive lessons from David Lennox of Covent Garden (singing) and the late Herbert Whone (violin). My other interests include horse riding, rock climbing and kayaking.

I am a Person Centred Counsellor and Psychotherapist, co-founder of CounsellingHub.org and also run a small private practice. I am passionate about the power of therapy as a force for good for the individual and society. I believe counselling and psychotherapy should be available for all.

I am a Research student at Bath Spa University writing a thesis on Madness in Monologic Prose Fiction.

Cori Hill Heymann is an anthropologist and death educator. Her research includes an ethnographic study of the ‘Death Doula’ culture in the United States. The narrative exchange and gift of care giving by doulas is one driver for their utilization at the end-of-life. Cori also works full time in the managed healthcare industry (20 years) and continues to observe how private healthcare plans are (or are not) underwritten to support end-of-life care, as well as how medical management programs may influence end-of-life treatment.