Conversations about Arts, Humanities and Health - First Event

Come along and contribute to the inaugural season of Conversations about arts, humanities and health, a series of free online events where scholars, health professionals, and the public discuss how arts and humanities can inform healthcare. Hosted by The University of Kent and with the support of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, these events seek to develop meaningful dialogue and connections between humanities and medicine.

Each conversation will feature a central guest who will comment on the fruitful interaction between arts, humanities and health in their career. Attendees will be able to ask guests for insights around best practice, challenges and pitfalls, etc. Afterwards, we will disseminate the conversations as podcasts, alongside a summary of key ideas on our website and social media.

Join us for our first Conversation at 4:00pm-5.30 pm BST on 21 April 2021 with Professor Nicola Shaughnessy (University of Kent).

Co-organisers Prof Ian Sabroe and Dr Dieter Declercq will talk with Nicola about her inspiring work and many interdisciplinary collaborations with artists, health professionals, and scholars in humanities and social sciences. The focus of our conversation will be investigating what constitutes best practice for introducing arts and performance methods into health contexts, including training for health professionals.

Register here on Eventbrite, and we will send out an email with a link 24 hours before the event, as well as 1 hour before the event begins.

If you already have questions you’d like to put to Nicola during our conversation, please feel free to email them in advance to aestheticsandhealth@kent.ac.uk.

Prof Nicola Shaughnessy is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent. Throughout her career, she has worked across subject boundaries, with publications in literature, film and social science as well as performance studies and theatre history. She founded Kent’s Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance (2010-2018), and is co-editor of Methuen’s Performance and Science series. Prof Shaughnessy is currently collaborating with psychologists and neuroscientists through projects using creative and participatory research practices to explore neurodiversity and mental health. She was Principal Investigator for the AHRC funded project, Imagining Autism, and the follow-on programme Autism Reimagined. She’s currently leading another AHRC project, Playing A/Part, investigating the experience of autistic women, girls and marginalised genders through participatory arts practices (See here for an animated short about the project as part of the BBC’s Animated Thinking series).

Conversations about arts, humanities and health is a joint initiative by Prof Ian Sabroe and Dr Dieter Declercq. Ian is Consultant in Respiratory Medicine (Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) and Honorary Professor of Medical Humanities (University of Sheffield). Dieter is Lecturer in Film and Media Studies and Associate Director of the Aesthetics Research Centre (University of Kent).

Future guests in the series include Dr Lauren Barron (Baylor University), Dr Alyssa Burgart (Stanford University), Prof Paul Crawford (University of Nottingham), Dr Esther L Jones (Clark University), Prof David Magnus (Stanford University) and Dr Chris Millard (University of Sheffield).