International Health Humanities Network Membership

Deborah Steinberg grew up in the Bay Area and studied creative writing and literature at Bard College.  She spent seven years teaching English, singing in bands, and editing a ‘zine in Bordeaux, France, where she refined her sense of joie de vivre.  She earned an MA in English Literature at the Université Michel Montaigne - Bordeaux III, where her thesis topic was "Understanding Illness Through Language and Narrative."  She currently lives the good life in San Francisco, where, in addition to exploring topics of illness and healing through writing, she sings in the women’s alt-choir Conspiracy of Venus.

Website: http://deborahsteinberg.wordpress.com

Claudia Sterbini is a PhD student at Edinburgh University. Her project, funded by AHRC through SGSAH, explores the construction of pathological asexuality in Victorian fiction. As Medical Humanities Project Assistant, she is currently helping revive Edinburgh Medical Humanities Network. She is the deputy editor of the academic publication FORUM, a board member on the academic journal Romance, Revolution and Reform and on the referee panel of The Wellsian. She has standing publications on the gothic, asexuality, and the medical humanities and has presented widely on these topics, both to UK and international audiences.

Mayra is a performer / puppeteer, Theatre Director and Dramatherapist (MA) . She studied Lecoq based Devising Theatre and Performance at London International School of Performing Arts. She has collaborated as puppeteer / Deviser with the Out of Chaos Theatre and Yellow Earth (Pulse Festival 2013), the Around The Glove (Little Angel Theatre, 2014 - 2015) and is collaborating with other theatres in London. As Movement Director worked at the Hard Comedy group. As Artistic Director at Vertebra Theatre, she co-directed the short film Ostrako (Shell), Movement directed Birdphobia and directed the puppetry performance Dark Matter (Camden Fringe, 2015, MIND festival) raising awareness on dementia. In 2015, she has been a resident artist at The Institute de la Marrionette (France) undertaking research in using puppetry and performance for community and organisational develpment. She has worked as Team Manager at the Grove Recovery Day Centre for people with severe and and enduring mental health experiences. Since 2004, she has been facilitating groups of children, young people and adults in community, educational and prison settings in Greece, UK and other countries. She has also faciliated workshops on embodied dream work at international conferences (ex. Int. congress of Psychotherapy 2011, Performing the World, etc). 

Eva-Marie Stern, MA, RP, Clinical Member: Ontario Society of Psychotherapists, Assistant Professor, Dept of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, is an Art Psychotherapist who graduated from Goldsmiths College, University of London.  She co-founded WRAP (Women Recovering from Abuse Program) in 1998. She practices, teaches and supervises within Women’s College Hospital’s Trauma Therapy Program and in private practice.  She curates the Art not Violence gallery at womenshealthmatters.ca/art-not-violence, leads graduate seminars on the relationships between art-making, trauma and therapy, and is writing about the use of visual arts in postgraduate medical education.

I am currently a history of med student.

Margaret Storey is Professor of History at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. She received her PhD from Emory University in 1999 and has published books and articles about the South during the Civil War. She is a member of the Public Policy Committee and the Family Advisory Board of The Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and sits on the Board of Directors of The Danny Did Foundation in Chicago. The author of opinion pieces about medical marijuana, special education, disability rights, and Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy for The Guardian online, the Motherlode Blog at The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and CNN Online, Storey comes to advocacy for as the parent of a daughter with Aicardi Syndrome, a rare condition that causes intractable seizures and disabilities.

I'm the author of Bioethics and Medical Issues in Literature (Greenwood P), a medical humanities textbook used worldwide. Its 2nd rev. edition is forthcoming. I'm writing The Surgeon Storyteller: the life and arts of Richard Seler, M.D.

I have written in the field of literature and medicine for 14 years, as shown on my website (www.medicalhumanities.net).

Besides being a Yaddo felllow, I have lectured at Yale Medicine School.

I am professor of behavioral science in Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS), Nepal and Central Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. My areas of interest are health humanities,intra and inter professional relationship, health governance and healer-patient relationahips. PAHS is working in close partnership with the national health system of Nepal to improve the health care services in the remore/rural areas through, among others, producing technically competent and socially responsible health care personnel, facilitating their deployment in the underserved rural areas and providing the needed technical and professional support while they work there. 

I have been researching issues concerning gender and sexual identity in relation to popular culture (especially the depiction of queer masculinities in film, social media, literature and photography) in Latin America, the Caribbean and Latino communities in the USA. My current research has moved onto an exploration of the cultural history of HIV in this geographical areas. I am the editor of 'HIV in World Cultures: 30 Years of Representations' (Ashgate Publishing, 2013) and the author of 'Representations of HIV/AIDS in Hispano-American and Caribbean Culture: cuerpos suiSIDAs' (Ashgate Oublishing , 2014). I am currently investigating the cultural history of HIV stigma in Latin American popular culture. 

I am a Learning Advisor with the Social Inclusion and Wellbeing Team, Nottingham NHS Healthcare Trust, and Fellow of the Institute of Mental Health.  As a member of the Education MIN I've been involved in research and publication on the barriers and benefits of education for people using mental health services.  I have taught Literature in further, higher and adult and community education and personal development courses in the voluntary sector and adult and community education, and have a Ph.D. in literature.