International Health Humanities Network Membership

• I am a Professor of English at Alverno College in Milwaukee. In the last several years I have created several courses in the Health Humanities, including one on Illness and Recovery in literature and film, have implemented a 3-course Health Humanities Specialization (including a course on Medical Ethics), and have designed a three-course on-line learning certificate and badges in the Health Humanities. As a scholar and researcher I am especially interested in bibliotherapy and the intersection between reading fiction and the potential benefits for mental health.

• Recently I published an article on Haruki Murakami's novel 1Q84 and therapeutic reading and writing-- "Haruki Murakami’s Through Literary Transformation."

• My book chapter on the creative re-writing of "The Yellow Wallpaper" entitled, "From Empathy to Compassion: Embodying "The Yellow Wallpaper" Through Interdisciplinary Learning" is being considered for inclusion in a book about new strategies for art and humanities teaching related to self-care and wellness.

• I am scheduled to give a presentation to a large behavioral health care collaborative soon and am looking forward to finding new ways to bring the health humanities to the public and to the healthcare profession.

housing worker working in participatory art

Am a retired obstetician and gynaecologist

interested in writing poetry

Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen teaches courses in the history of early and medieval Christianity, with specific topics sources in religion and medicine and Orthodox Christianity. 

I am an artist and Arts and Health MA working as a support-worker and therapies facilitator in a secure hospital environment. I work with female patients diagnosed with learning disabilities and mental illness, most are also diagnosed with BPD (borderline personality disorder). I deliver an arts-based workshop once a week and receive clinical supervision from a consultant art therapist. I also pursue my own arts practice and research.

I am a life-long practicing artist and craftsperson.

I have worked in a variety of roles including retail, sales, purchasing, interior design, merchandising, and factory. Most recently I have eight years experience supporting adults living with learning disabilities, mental illness and challenging behavior, within a secure hospital environment.

Although currently employed as a support worker I also function as a therapies facilitator. In addition to supporting clients with their personal hygiene, finances, daily living skills, social skills and behaviour, I have been running a therapeutic arts program under the clinical supervision of a Consultant Art Psychotherapist. During this time I have prepared risk assessments, contributed to patient care-plans, made clinical referrals to Art Psychotherapy, and prepared and installed two exhibitions of art work produced by clients and staff.

I recieved an MA (with merit) in Arts and Health from the University of Glamorgan, 2010.

I enjoy using my life experience and skills to help people achieve their full potential, and have a desire to promote health, well-being and social inclusion.

I am a senior lecturer in Higher Education and my particular research interest is the exploration of ethical problems and everyday decision-making in health and social care. Familiar with the work of Gadamer and his hermeneutic enquiry, I am also inteested in the writings of Martha Nussbaum and her reference to narrative and social justice. My thesis is a study of conventional methodology for evaluating decision-making in nursing practice with a proposal for a more flexible measure that is more consistent with the messiness of human endeavour.    

I am a medical anthropologist with training in public health. My focus is on gathering stories from a range of groups and individuals who experience and/or are addressing an identified health issue. I use a 'partial PAR' (participatory action research) model to bring together various stakeholders' voice that combines community-based academic research. My latest work, in Angola and Vietnam, entails bringing together representatives from a wide range of disciplines and fields, looking to find new ways to bring the insights and mehods of the arts and humanities to bear on global public health issues. Colleagues and I are especially interested in naratives told through photo elicitation, photovoice and art forms to carry stories that can provoke change in understanding and behaviour.

Rabbi Eryn London, worked as a chaplain resident at New York Presbyterian - Weill Cornell Medical Center for two years, with one year working on the medical floor and out-patient infusion center, and her second year as part of the palliative care team.  She received smicha (rabbinic ordination) from Yeshviat Maharat in June 2017. She earned her B.A from Goucher College, where she majored in theatre which she combined with a double minor in psychology and Judaic studies.  Eryn subsequently earned an M.A. at Goldsmiths, University of London. She specialised in applied drama: theatre in educational, community, and social contexts.  Eryn also studied at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and for for three years at the Susi Bradfield Women’s Institute of Halachic Leadership at Midreshet Lindenbaum, both in Israel.  Eryn served as the scholar in residence at the ACT Jewish Community in Canberra, Australia in 2016. She was also the rabbinic intern at Adath Shalom B'nai Israel in Chicago, Illinois, and at the Mt. Freedom Jewish Center in Randolph, New Jersey. In addition, Eryn has lectured in various communities in Israel, Canada, Colombia, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

Thomas Lawrence Long, associate professor-in-residence in the School of Nursing at the University of Connecticut, is the author of The Meaning Management Challenge: Making Sense of Health, Illness and Disease (2010). He has contributed chapters to the edited collections The Meaning Management Challenge: Making Sense of Health, Illness and Disease (2010), Inner Space, Outer Space: Humanities, Technology, and the Postmodern World (1993). His chapters or articles on topics in medical humanities have been included in African American National Biography (2010), Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature (2006), Encyclopedia of Religious Rituals (2004), including articles on Cotton Mather and William Byrd II. Forthcoming publications include an article on medical dissent in the writing of Samuel R. Delany and an article on the AIDS apocalypticism of Diamanda Galas and David Wojnarowicz. He is a founding member of the Humanities and Medicine Faculty Study Group of the UConn Humanities Institute.