International Health Humanities Network Membership

Soon-to-be graduate student of Psychology in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, who is currently applying for Health Psychology masters in UK universities. She has been involved as an entrepreneur in start-up companies (Workenter.gr and Open Crete) and as a volunteer in NGOs (AIESEC, Smile of the Child, TEDx). 

I am a Senior Research Fellow on the Cultural Contexts of Health, and a Senior Research Fellow in the Medical School at Exeter University.

After working for several years in the international development sector, I pursued doctoral research on the impacts of HIV and AIDS on rural livelihoods and social support networks in southern Africa. More recently, my work has focused on understanding and addressing the social and cultural factors that perpetuate health inequalities.

Drawing primarily on narrative, ethnographic and participatory approaches, my research examines the ways that people experience health and illness and make decisions over treatment use. I am particularly interested in understanding how certain health 'conditions' become medicalised, and the ways that this inter-relates with poverty, disadvantage and health-related inequalities. My current ESRC-funded project, DeStress (http://destressproject.org.uk) is concerned with understanding how moral narratives relating to responsibility and welfare reform influence the medicalisation of distress and the uptake of antidepressants and talking therapies in low-income communities in the UK.

My work has focused on the health and well-being of low-income communities, migrants and families with complex needs; sexual health and HIV; environment-related health inequities; and the promotion of healthy schools.

I am co-director (with Professor Mark Jackson) of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Culture and Health and work closely with the WHO Regional Office for Europe project on the Cultural Contexts of Health (http://euro.who.int/en/data-and-evidence/cultural-contexs-of-health).

I am a senior researcher for the McPin Foundation and have worked on a number of evaluations that explore the impact of community interventions (e.g. peer support) on mental health. I am also currently involved in developing evaluations that look at the impact of performance and arts therapies on mental health.  During my PhD I explored how narratives and stories may have an impact on attitudes. I also have a personal visual arts practice, have made a number short digital story style films and am exploring more ways of bringing my creative practice and research work together in a more coherent fashion. I am particularly interested in developing projects using verbatim theatre to explore the experience mental health.

Received my MA in Cultural Heritage Studies looking at medical museums and what kinds of emotiona processing may happen there, looking to pursue a PhD analysing how medical museums do or may contribute to broader social health and wellbeing. I also have a longstanding interest in medical humanities and public health.

Reg. Nurse

Master of Arts in Arthistory

Artist

I am a Professor of Archaeology and the History of Art at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. I teach courses in Heritage and Museum Studies and am currently conducting research in medical humanities and the history of art, and the hospital as a space for art. 

I am a psychologist and curator. My research interests focus on the use of visual arts in the care of people with dementia. I curated the international exhibition 'art in the asylum' at the Djanogly gallery Nottingham (sept-nov 2013). 

I'm an Anthropologist interested in Health seeking behavior. Final year Ph.D. candidate in Public Health investigating the health-seeking behavior towards the use of medicines (antibiotics).

I'm From Maputo,  Mozambique where I teach and research Health anthropology and health sciences at a university.

MA U of Edinburgh

PhD U of Pennsylvania 

English Professor Lafayette College, PA

Fellow, College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Clinical Ethics Fellow

Foundational/Advanced training in Narrative Medicine, Columbia U, NYC

Consultant-Director, Narrative Professionalism Program, U of Pennsylvania-Health System

Marina Tsaplina is a U.S. based performing artist, patient advocate and Founder, CEO and Creative Director of THE BETES Organization whose mission is to employ the performing arts to help people with chronic conditions form a flourishing relationship with their health.

A Scholar in the Medical Humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine - Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine, her work is dedicated to bringing artistic intervention into health care in order to achieve a more inclusive culture that elevates the patient and artist voice. Through BETES growing programming, she brings the unique power of arts-based research to chronic illness care to serve patients young and old, caregivers, and to strengthen the clinician-patient relationship.

She has lived with Type 1 diabetes since she was two years old.

She studied puppetry in Germany, France, and the U.S. and has always been driven to investigate interdisciplinary applications of the arts in order to deliver transformative social impact.

“Artists hold a key value proposition for our current health care system. Amidst automation and advanced technological innovation, there is still a deep need to nurture the human spirit of the person who lives within a body that is in some way not well. This is the space for artistic practice to thrive and serve the entire ecosystem of care.”