International Health Humanities Network Membership

I have a training in astrophysics and linguistics at the postgraduate level from Stonybrook and Rutgers in USA and diplomas in counseling psychology and Buddhist psychology. Am interested in exploring how literature, poetry and science readings and reflections can impact recovery and rehabilitation from mental health crises, especially in bipolar II and psychosis, from a neuroplasticity perspective as well as cognitive behavioral perspective. 

Lecturer in Adult Nursing in School of Nursing, Midwifery and Physiotherapy at the University of Nottingham.  Currently undertaking Doctoral research investigating the language of assessment in a healthcare setting.  The work uses actual recorded interactions between healthcare staff and patients and highligths a number of key areas about how these interactions are managed and developed

I am a Dramatherapist trained in the Sesame Approach and using drama and movement as a means to explore the healthy in people who have been labelled through a medical diagnosis or named pathology.  I run a two year CPD course for registered professionals to learn how to use the arts in their existing practice.   I also work as a psychotherapist is private practice.  

Dr Smith is the Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow for Nursing and the Humanities at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Born in Australia, Dr Smith came to Emory in 2015 to work with the School of Nursing, the Centre for Ethics, the Centre for Human Health and the College of Arts and Sciences to build collaborations between nursing and the liberal arts. Dr Smith was awarded a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in English and History and a PhD in History from the University of Wollongong in Australia and her current research explores the development of psychiatric nursing history in the US since World War II. Before coming to Emory, Dr Smith worked in the School of Nursing at the University of Wollongong where she researched mental health nursing history and taught reflective practice. Dr Smith has also worked in multicultural HIV/AIDS health promotion in Sydney, Australia and studied scriptwriting at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.

Alda is a social innovator and a quality of life advocate and executive. She has a passion for compassionate, person-centred solutions. With a mix of humanitarian & business acumen, Alda has served various companies, organisations & institutions incl. Medi-Clinic, Netcare, Life Healthcare, University of Cape Peninsula, SPCA, Heart Foundation, Air Mercy Service, Alcohol Fetal Syndrome Association and more as executive; curriculum & content developer; relationship & experience manager; quality of life advocate; transformative engagement specialist; communications & creative strategist; leader and mentor; PR consultant; human-centred design specialist; sales & marketing director and business administrator. 

A summary of her career purpose: 

To lead change in healthcare, education, business and the social sector through engaging and interpreting the voices of society, facilitating compassionate, narratively-engaged and dynamic communication and aiding human-centred designs, experiences, collaborations, policies, governance, strategies and solutions to address quality of life needs in a socially responsible and sustainable manner. 

I completed my honours degree in Fine Art at the University of Nottingham in 2013 resulting in a B.A Honours.  

My most recent painting ,Soundless , upside girl on a bar , was a finalist in The Nottingham summer open art competition ,it communicates   a frisson  of tension and energy ,and is  a visual response to the soundscapes I produced for my degree work , in which I discussed the unheard  sound of our internal dialogue entitled

The Whispering

What scares me

The internal Dialogue of Childhood memory -

they can be heard on my web page., Annie SAmuel artist.com

Successes include ,Finalist and award winner with the Whispering in the Derby open art competition,2012 finalist in the Derwent drawing prize in 2013 shown at the Mall Galleries London,   prize winner at the international  Patchings Exhibition in 2013 and preselected for the Threadneedle prize 2013

Currently the Derwent Pencil Company have commissioned 4 art pieces for their new web page launch in April 2014

I lost my husband in may of this year and through painting images of his body (with his permission) ravaged by the trauma of prostate cancer I have felt the work to be therapeutic and have offered to put it on The Movember awareness of cancer campaign

Flora is a practising General and Restorative Dentist. She trained at University College London and subsequently gained further qualifications from: Birkbeck College London, the Faculty of General Dental Practitioners, the Royal College of Surgeons England and most recently King’s College London. She carries out all aspects of General and Restorative Dentistry and has a Special Interest in Periodontology.

Flora also works as a Clinical Teacher in Periodontology and Conservative Dentistry within the Restorative Department at King’s College London Dental Institute based at Guy’s Hospital. She very much enjoys her teaching role working within the UK’s top Dental Institute and sees herself very much in the role of a mentor feeling privileged to share her experience of the complexities of clinical practice with such high calibre Dental students.

At school in N. Ireland, she was allowed to take Art and Pottery classes without committing to exams, along side the necessary A level Science subjects. Unable to also timetable her favourite subject of English Literature at school, she subsequently studied for a BA in English and Humanities in the evenings at Birkbeck College London whilst carrying on in full time Dental practice. The experience of having both an Arts and Humanities and Clinical Sciences background to post graduate level has formed the basis of her research interests in Clinical Education. These lie in the development and maintenance of Clinical Expertise, working within a Clinical team and the application of Arts and Humanities  to improve observational, listening and haptic  skills, develop communication skills and  help novices control their own nerves and become more comfortable dealing with the ambiguity and  complex  decision making of real life Clinical practice with the aim of  becoming  open and reflective practitioners, able to deal with a wide range of patients compassionately and to also look after the wellbeing of themselves and their colleagues. 

I am a child psychiatrist, the Associate Program Director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship at the University of Southern California, and the medical director for the Child and Adolescent Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic at LAC-USC Medical Center.  As a physician and musician, I have interests in all the fantastic ways in which music and medicine overlap, often serving to meet the needs of patients and providers alike.  I routinely employ elements of music and art in the care of my child psychiatric patients, be it individual or group settings, and try to instruct my child psychiatry fellows in the same.  Similarly, I am routinely blessed with the opportunity to teach interactive Music and Medicine sessions to medical students in a Medical Humanities course at USC's Keck School of Medicine.

I am an a Norwegian music therapist and musician living in Oslo. I am currently working on my PhD with a project where I'm investegating how participation in music therapy is experienced by the users. Theoretically the project links to the perspective of mental health recovery and resource-oriented music therapy. 

I am currently a computing science teacher, and a PHD researcher for social media technologies with the domain of chronic illness and Diabetes. I am at Oxford Brookes University and work within the department of computing and communication technologies and the department of history, philosophy and religion. I work with corpus linguistics, social psychology, education and computing.