OSL Research Group ‘Medical & Health Humanities’

 

The Medical & Health Humanities Research Group is a research-driven initiative operating at the intersection of health, the arts, and the humanities. Our mission is to foster innovative and critical inquiry into the complex ways that literature and the arts shape, and are shaped by, experiences of health, illness, disability, and the body.

We provide a dedicated platform for researchers exploring the relationships between health-oriented fields (e.g. disability studies, mad studies, and embodiment studies) and literary and cultural forms. Thematically, the group’s research encompasses entangled and pressing issues such as toxic embodiment, contamination, and climate anxiety; queer and feminist critiques of medical authority; the intersection of illness of gendered and sexualized embodiment; histories of pathologization and corresponding forms of resistance; narrative genres of health; contemporary articulations of health, illness, and disability in a digitized world, and many more.

The group’s focus is not merely on applying humanistic methods to medical topics, but on rethinking the categories of the “medical” and “health” themselves. We seek to contribute to the Netherlands School for Literary Studies (OSL) by stimulating interdisciplinary research that is simultaneously scholarly rigorous and socially relevant, demonstrating the indispensable role of the humanities and culture in understanding the multifaceted nature of health.

Coordinators

Members:

  • Müge Özoğlu (Utrecht University)
  • Tekla Mecsnóber (University of Groningen)
  • Olivia Fialho (Utrecht University; Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science)
  • Johan Sonnenschein (Utrecht University)
  • Mia You (Utrecht University)
  • Ann Hoag (University of Groningen)
  • Hannah Van Hove (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
  • Megan Leitch (University of Groningen)
  • Patrick Outhwaite (University of Groningen)
  • Sarah de Mul (Open Universiteit)
  • Marileen La Haije (Radboud University)
  • Leni van Goidsenhoven (University of Amsterdam)
  • Jurgen Pieters (Ghent University)
  • Zoë Ghyselinck (Ghent University)