International Health Humanities Network Membership

Julia has worked as a painter and photographer for over 30 years. She has taught Art at secondary level and Historical and Theoretical Studies and Design Management at undergraduate level in departments of Art and Design.

She is interested in the potential of the arts to enhance wellbeing and protect good mental health. She has been active in the organisation of Wirksworth Festival, Derbyshire and has run community arts projects. 

Currently, she is working as an Art Psychotherapist with students in an academy school in Nottinghamshire.

Dr. Sathyaraj Venkatesan is Associate Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli. He received Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. He was a Fellow at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, New York and a Senior International Bibliographer with the Publications of Modern Language Association of America (PMLA). 

He is widely travelled including USA, UK, France, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, Srilanka, Taiwan. 

He is the author of The Idea and Practice of Reading (2018, Singapore; Springer)  with R. Joseph Ponniah, Edgar Allan Poe: Tales and Other Writings (2017, Orient BlackSwan), AIDS in Cultural Bodies: Scripting the Absent Subject (1980-2010) (2016, Cambridge Scholars Publishing) with Gokulnath Ammanathil and Mapping the Margins: A Study of Ethnic Feminist Consciousness in Toni Morrison’s Novels (2011). 

Presently, he is at work on three book projects: "India Retold" (contract under Bloomsbury/USA); "Gender, Eating Disorders and Graphic Medicine" (contract under Routledge/UK); "Travails of Motherhood: Infertility Comics and Graphic Medicine" (contract under Routledge/UK).  

His articles have appeared in Web of Science/Scopus indexed journals such as Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Journal of Medical Humanities, American Medical Association Journal of Ethics (AMA), Health, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, World Literature Today (WLT), The Explicator, International Fiction Review, Journal of Creative Communications, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, MELUS, Journal of Language, Literature and Culture, AMULA, American Notes and Queries, Journal of Comics and Graphic Novels and also in a number of renowned publications including INKS: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, The  London Film and Media Reader, Notes on Contemporary Literature among others.

His interview/article/profile is mentioned in media such as The Hindu, The New Indian Express, JoongAng Libo (South Korean), Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhoomi.  

I am a linguistics PhD student in the University of East Anglia, I hold an MA in English Language and Applied Linguistics (University of Huddersfield) and a degree in Philosophy (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona).

Research interests:

Representation of mental illness in intitutional and laypeople's discourses and self-representation.
Linguistic discourse analysis, Sytemic Functional Linguistics, metaphor.

William Viney is Postdoctral Research Fellow in the Centre for Medical Humanities and the Department of English Studies, Durham University.

My research is a fusion of language, drawing and installation. It results in conversations, writings, workshops and collaborations. With my research and teaching, I aim to foster humanization and care. I also provoke different ways of thinking about how we explore questions that touch on the liminal nature and complexities of our lived experiences. Originally trained as a responsive evaluator and qualitative researcher and the philosophical hermeneutical tradition, currently my work is about the intersection of care, aesthetics and ethics. 

I work as the Director Medical Humanities, Health & Society at Drew University, Madison New Jersey, U.S.A. In addition, I am an Associate professor of Care Ethics, University for Humanistic Studies in The Netherlands (one day a week). 

I’m fascinated by the complexity of human health and by the places, spaces and experiences that affect us all. I’ve worked in research, policy and practice across health and human services in government and for national and international charities, investigating ways to design, implement and evaluate integrated health interventions that will have impact for all of us. 

With a PhD in Social Science, I remain committed to understanding, analysing and synthesising complex information from diverse sources, and applying my skills in both qualitative and quantitative data analysis. I enjoy building programs in new environments, within and around systems. I grapple with complicated questions and interrogate them for and with the people that use the solutions I design and deliver. 

My work is often about conceptualising various approaches and weaving them together so that I can optimise the impact and success of the programs I deliver. It is about communicating complex information, simply. 

I have held strategic appointments focused on linking insights and evidence with action for Wellcome Trust, Access Arts and Culture, health and Wellbeing Alliance. As well, I’ve held senior management and operational positions focussed on scaling and implementing health programs with Sense, Cerebral Palsy League and Movember Foundation. I have held board director positions with Amnesty International UK and Engage, the visual arts charity. 

My academic career has included appointments in Australia and United Kingdom, at Queensland University of Technology, University College London, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. I have secured funding for research that advances our understanding of how to implement and scale interventions for improving people’s health. This includes support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), Esme Fairbairn Foundation Trust, Sport England and Big Lottery Fund. 

Medical Humanities Portfolio Manager at the Wellcome Trust

I am a literary scholar and specialist in literature and culture from 1890 to the present, with a focus on women's writing, feminism and sex, sexuality and gender, and I teach literature from the nineteenth century to the present.

I am currently writing a book on effeminacy and the experience of belonging in contemporary online and offline narratives, focusing on the intersections of gay bottom identity, gender nonconformity, and marginalisation across Western and non-Western settings. 

More broadly I am interested in mental health among gay men and men who have sex with men, particularly the experience of belonging in multiple contexts: in the body, home, family, school, workplace, online, and in healthcare settings (among others). 

Senior Teaching Fellow in Mental Health at Southampton University, Professional musician www.walkerbroad.co.uk and childrens book publisher www.thesanitycompany.co.uk

Creative practitioner, researcher, activist working mostly in youth and community development and wellbeing. Long history initiating award-winning youth development and wellbeing projects that sit at the intersection between arts, health promotion, education, community and social innovation. Currently working on:

- doctoral research at the University of Auckland using participatory methods to research the possibilities of creativity for youth mental health and wellbeing in Aotearoa

- The development of arts-based community youth mental health and wellbeing prgrammes

- the development of Te Ara Auaha, a new interdisciplinary strategic alliance for creative wellbeing innovation