A detailed overview of Canadian health humanities programs located in medical schools.

Dalhousie University

• Medical Humanities - HEALS: The program is nationally and internationally recognized for the opportunities students have to be involved in music and the arts. The program was initiated in 1992 by Dr. Jock Murray and under the subsequent direction of Drs. Ron Stewart and Gerri Frager has continued to grow. The majority of opportunities are extracurricular with some integration in the core undergraduate medical curriculum. As part of our mandate to produce healthy, well-rounded physicians, the humanities can play a role in self reflection and care, the development of professional identity, an understanding of the role of other health professionals and the importance of community organizations and supports in patient care.

McGill University

• Social Studies of Medicine: Founded in 1966, our department has developed into one of the most unique and comprehensive units for the social studies of medicine in the nation. The Department of Social Studies of Medicine is an interdisciplinary teaching and research unit in the Faculty of Medicine. Faculty members represent the fields of history, anthropology, and sociology of medicine and medical science. Teaching and research focus on the institutional, cultural, and technological determinants of medical knowledge and practices. Subject areas include contemporary biomedicine, pre-modern scholarly medical traditions, and indigenous non-Western systems. The Department offers courses and programs at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

McMaster University

• Offers several programs related to health humanities including the “Art of Seeing” program, a collaboration between the Department of Family Medicine and the McMaster Museum of Art. They also offer an Interdisciplinary Global Health undergraduate summer program on Maternal and Infant Health in Morocco entitled Women’s Rights and Family in Islam.

Memorial University Newfoundland

• Division of Community Health & Humanities: The Division of Community Health & Humanities in the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland aims to improve the health of the community through education, research and service that is focused on the prevention of disease and the protection and promotion of health.

University of Alberta

• Arts & Humanities in Health & Medicine: Arts & Humanities in Health & Medicine (AHHM) program in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta offers explicit recognition that clinical practice is both an art and a science. The AHHM program recognizes the many relationships that exist between the arts, humanities, social sciences and medicine. Our program exists to initiate activity and inquiry into these intersections, and to provide a focus for existing activities in this area across the faculty, the University of Alberta and elsewhere. We offer several electives, placements and professional development opportunities for students in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry.

University of British Columbia

• Currently offers medical students the option to carry out a medical humanities project.

UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

• Calgary Health Humanities: The Calgary Community of Practice in Health Humanities is committed to advancing an interdisciplinary, reciprocal collaboration between health and humanities disciplines to promote a deeper understanding of the human condition to best support humane care.

• History of Medicine and Health Care: The Program in the History of Medicine & Health Care at the University of Calgary is an active group of faculty teaching and researching in the history of medicine and the health sciences.

University of Manitoba

• Health Humanities Research Cluster: This cluster is focused on conversations about the critical and pressing ways in which humanities disciplines can inform and enrich thinking and practice in health professions. Topics include the problem of defining health, bioethical questions (such as abortion, physician assisted suicide, genetic testing, body enhancement and alteration, etc), relationships between patients and health professionals, and the intersection of health and various identity categories (such as race, gender, sexuality, and age).

University of Northern British Columbia

• Health Arts Research Centre: We are a group of learners, researchers and collaborators from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and experience who are interested in synergistic and creative ways to interrogate the determinants of health disparities in the north and to engage in strengths-based visioning and action to address the revival of health, healing and well-being in northern communities.

University of Ottawa

• Medicine & The Humanities: The Medicine & the Humanities program at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa is a new and evolving program. It seeks to enhance our students’ education by formally infusing both our French and English streams’ curricula with concepts of health, medicine and healing through medical history, philosophy, the arts and literature. According to Stanford University’s program, “Since humans have been able, we have used philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language to understand and record our world. These modes of expression have become some of the subjects that traditionally fall under the humanities umbrella.”

University of Toronto

• Centre for Faculty Development: The Centre for Faculty Development (CFD) is a partnership between the University of Toronto (UofT) and St. Michael's Hospital (SMH) - a fully affiliated teaching hospital. The CFD is committed to enhancing the academic development of faculty in the Faculty of Medicine, additional Health Science Faculties (i.e. nursing, pharmacy, etc.) at UofT, and other institutions through innovation, capacity building and scholarship in the design, implementation and evaluation of faculty development. Note: Offers training in narrative competence.

• Health, Arts, and Humanities Program: Engages a growing community of scholars in the arts, humanities and clinical disciplines across the University of Toronto and beyond to advance a deeper understanding of health, illness, suffering, disability and the provision of healthcare.

• Narrative Healthcare Atelier CPD Certification Program: This intensive, interactive atelier will apply narrative theory and reflective practice in the contexts of interprofessional patient-centred healthcare, research and education. It aims to: enliven your engagement and collaboration as clinicians and educators from all disciplines; support best practices as teachers, clinicians and lifelong learners; transform the paradigm of your daily professional practice with a renewed commitment to the core values of humanistic healthcare.

• SCOPE: The Health Humanities Learning Lab: The online hub for Canada’s first arts- and humanities-based undergraduate health curriculum. Launched under the direction of Professor Andrea Charise at the University of Toronto Scarborough, the purpose of SCOPE is to highlight the innovative research and learning initiatives being done by our awesome interdisciplinary team of Health Humanities students and researchers.

University of Saskatchewan

• Surgical Humanities Program: The Surgical Humanities Program within the Department of Surgery seeks to educate and engage surgeons, residents and medical students in the humanities. Music, art, literature, philosophy, drama, languages and the history of surgery are all being recruited in this effort and avenues of active involvement and research in the surgical humanities are offered.

York University

• Health and Society Bachelor of Arts: York’s Health and Society program is an interdisciplinary program bridging critical heath studies, humanities (history, creative writing), and the social sciences (indigenous studies, anthropology, sociology) to consider the social, cultural, political, historical and economic forces that shape health, well-being, and illness in both the Global North (Canada, US, EU, and the UK) and Global South (including nations like Peru, Kenya, Nepal, and many more).

Baylor UNIVERSITY

• Medical Humanities Program: One of a handful of programs of its kind in the country. Our mission, in keeping with the vision of Pro Futuris, is to provide a truly transformational education for students seeking careers in healthcare and the medical arts under the guidance of faculty who are committed to compelling scholarship and dedicated to service. Our program is breaking ground in a creative way, redefining how undergraduate students who aspire towards careers in healthcare can be educated and equipped, not only with an outstanding foundation in the sciences, but also with a rich exposure to the humanities. It is a truly interdisciplinary program, consisting of courses taught by faculty from many other departments, including English, religion, philosophy, history, sociology, and psychology.

Case Western Reserve university

• Medicine, Society, and Culture (MSc Concentration): The Medicine, Society and Culture (MSC) concentration within the Master of Arts in Bioethics and Medical Humanities degree program gives students a unique opportunity to explore how influences beyond biology directly affect health and well-being. The one-year degree draws on realms from law to social work and anthropology to ethics to explore ways that we define and understand illness, recovery, compassion and more.

Columbia University

• Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics: The Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics ("the Department") was inaugurated in January, 2018. Our core mission is to bring principles and practices from the humanities and ethics to influence and support the research, clinical, and teaching goals of Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S)...The Department is composed of three divisions: Narrative Medicine, Ethics, and Social Medicine & Professionalism. Together, these divisions support the medical school and its teaching hospitals to care for the sick in a trustworthy and patient-centered fashion. From privacy issues in precision medicine to relational aspects of primary care, the Department provides expertise from social sciences, humanities, and the arts in the daily, ongoing work of our health sciences campus. The research and teaching agendas of the Department include investigations of race and class equity in human genome advances, effective avenues for patient advocacy, and clinical outcomes of narrative skills training for program graduates. Note: Columbia Division of Narrative Medicine devoted to narrative medicine education and training.

Duke University

• Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine: The Trent Center’s program in Medical Humanities provides innovative educational and discovery experiences that broaden our understanding of human health and health care. The program draws on expertise from faculty throughout the university, engaging literature, spirituality, music, philosophy, and art to foster humanism in patient care and flourishing among clinicians, including students at all levels. In our programs and scholarship we aim to advance knowledge, improve teaching, and contribute to our community on local, national, and international levels, framing the world of medicine from the perspective of the humanities in order to contribute to a richer account of the purposes and goals of contemporary health care.

East Carolina university

• Department of Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Studies: The Department of Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Studies at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University carries out a three-fold mission of professional education, research, and service. The department teaches required courses in all four years of medical school, including courses on the ethical and social aspects of medicine in the first and second years, case-based ethics seminars with third-year students during their various clinical clerkship rotations, and electives in ethics, law, philosophy, history, literature, end-of-life issues, spirituality, leadership, social policy, and medical ethics and war for fourth-year students.

Harvard University

• Department of Global Health and Social Medicine: The Department of Global Health and Social Medicine applies social science and humanities research to constantly improve the practice of medicine, the delivery of treatment, and the development of health care policies locally and worldwide. Major efforts include developing the science of global health delivery implementation; advancing equity in health care delivery; and educating students and researchers on biosocial determinants of disease, health care delivery, and responsible practice of medicine. The Department is the central structure to help organize global health activities, especially medical education experiences, at Harvard Medical School.

Michigan State University

• Center for Bioethics and Social Justice: The Center and its faculty have been devoted to addressing a broad range of medical ethics and health policy issues since its founding in 1977. Our primary teaching commitment is to College of Human Medicine medical students at Michigan State University. Additionally, we also teach graduate students, medical residents, and undergraduates. In all of our teaching, from one hour lectures to semester-long courses, in developing curricula to conducting workshops, we collaborate with faculty in the colleges we serve. In our teaching, as in all our work, we emphasize the ways in which theory and practice illuminate one another.

Pennsylvania state university

• Department of Humanities, College of Medicine: When Penn State College of Medicine opened its doors in 1967, the Department of Humanities was one of its founding departments. In fact, it was the first Department of Humanities ever to be included in a college of medicine in the United States. The department consists of 10 primary and more than 20 joint faculty members. Faculty members have backgrounds in anthropology, literature, pedagogy, clinical medicine, philosophy, ethics, cultural studies, women’s and gender studies, psychology and nursing, and are engaged in a variety of innovative educational, scholarly, service and community-focused endeavors. The Department of Humanities at Penn State College of Medicine is innovative in its Arts in Health programming through Center Stage and the Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine.

Stanford University

• Medicine & the Muse Program: Medicine & the Muse is the home for the arts and humanities at the medical school, with programs that support diversity and integrate the arts and humanities into medical education, scholarly endeavors, and the practice of medicine. We are dedicated to enhancing the intellectual, educational, and health practice environments for students, faculty, healthcare professionals, and the Stanford community by exploring the intersections between medicine, the arts, humanities, and the social context of medical care.

University of california, Berkeley

• Program for the Medical Humanities: Many questions about the emerging medical landscape have been considered from the burgeoning fields of medical ethics, health policy and health law. Within its new home in the Centre for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society, the Program for the Medical Humanities extends, critiques and suggests alternatives to these perspectives through the lens of the humanities, anthropology, and the social and behavioral sciences. The frameworks, traditions, and knowledge base of these disciplines provide a rich resource of innovative thinking about the past, present, and future relationship between medicine and society. PMH seeks to promote the integration of these disciplines into the education of physicians, other health care providers, and the community at large.

• Art + Science Residence Program: The Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society (CSTMS), in partnership with the Arts Research Center (ARC), hosts an artist-in-residence program that will focus on nurturing exchanges between art, design, technology, science, and engineering at UC Berkeley, in the Bay Area, and across the region. The Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society is a research unit at UC Berkeley dedicated promoting rigorous interdisciplinary research based on the conviction that the pressing problems of our time are simultaneously scientific and social, technological and political, ethical and economic. The Arts Research Center is a think tank for the arts. It acts as a hub and a meeting place, and provides a space for reflection where artists, scholars, curators, and civic arts leaders from a variety of disciplines can gather and learn from one another.

University of California, Irvine

• Center for Medical Humanities: The UCI Center for Medical Humanities explores dimensions of human embodiment, especially those that relate to illness, disability, and other experiences of bodyminds. As a deliberate institutional collaboration between the School of Medicine, School of Humanities, and the Clare Trevor School of the Arts, the Centre brings together faculty and student scholars, clinicians and policy makers, and key community stakeholders to explore the arcs of living and dying and everything in between from a range of disciplinary perspectives. These perspectives span from the creative and performative arts, textual and visual representations, systems of belief and philosophical orientations to clinical practice and health sciences.

University of California, San Francisco

• Department of History and Social Sciences, School of Medicine: Our faculty and students examine the historical, ethical, racial, cultural, and political conditions that impact the promises of biomedical research and health care equity. Attentive to the demands of social justice and ecosystem symbiosis, we are training the next generations of scholars, clinicians, and researchers who will work in clinical, policy, academic, and research institutions, to guide the transformation of health care for all. The department is positioned to recognize and foster collaboration among faculty across UCSF who are engaged in research and teaching in the medical / health humanities (including history, narrative medicine, and health journalism) and social sciences (including anthropology, health policy, health systems research, bioethics, and community-based ethnography of health care).

University of Colorado, Denver

• Arts and Humanities in Healthcare, Center for Bioethics and Humanities: The Arts and Humanities in Healthcare Program in the Center for Bioethics and Humanities is an intellectual space, cultural site and accessible resource for the campus; for our colleagues regionally, nationally and internationally; and for the local community. As a place to exchange ideas, inspire collaboration, foster compassion, fuel imagination, and transcend boundaries, the program realizes the universal appeal of the arts and humanities and their power to connect student and teacher, patient and professional, citizen and artist, benefactor and institution.

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• Department of Social Medicine: The Department of Social Medicine is committed to teaching, research, and service that addresses the social dimensions of health, illness, and doctoring. Our department, housed within the UNC School of Medicine, is unique in its disciplinary diversity. The Social Medicine faculty encompass an extraordinary range of fields in the humanities, social sciences, and clinical medicine.

• Center for Health Equity Research: The UNC Centre for Health Equity Research (CHER) brings together collaborative, multidisciplinary teams of stakeholders to improve health in North Carolina communities with a shared commitment to innovation, collaboration, and health equity.

• Health Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Venue for Exploration (HHIVE): We are a group of researchers dedicated to linking the humanities and health sciences through student-centered research projects, innovative curricula, and public engagement. Our mission is to help prepare the next generation to think across disciplines, consult their values and passions, and tackle real-world problems to create meaningful social change. Admissions for the English M.A. concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture are open every fall. In this interdisciplinary program, students can focus on Global Health; Medicine and the Arts; Constructions of Illness; Narrative Medicine; Race, Justice, and Health. Courses can be taken in departments across the university, including social medicine, occupational therapy, anthropology, and English.

University of Rochester

• Master’s in Medical Humanities: This is a full-time, one year Master’s in Science degree program administered through the School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Rochester. It is for students in medicine, nursing and other healthcare disciplines, and students in humanities and social sciences. The program starts at the end of August and ends in mid-May.

University of Texas, Galveston

• Institute for Bioethics & Health Humanities: The Institute for the Medical Humanities is committed to moral inquiry, research, teaching, and professional service in medicine and health care. In today's often bewildering world of scientific, technological, cultural, and political changes, medicine faces human problems and possibilities that transcend traditional academic disciplines. Members of the Institute engage in research on ethical and legal problems in clinical practice and biomedical research; and on philosophical, historical, visual, literary, and religious dimensions of medicine and health care. This broad-gauged inquiry provides the foundation for the activities of the Institute faculty in medical and graduate teaching, clinical ethics consultation, and health policy analysis locally and in state, national, and international academic and public forums.

University of Texas, Houston

• McGovern Center for Humanities & Ethics: The McGovern Centre helps students explore health care through the lenses of history, ethics, law, literature, religion and spirituality, social science, cultural studies and the arts. We offer several programs including: Arts & Resilience; Medical Humanities; Sacred Vocation; and Tibetan Meditation.

University of Texas, San Antonio

• Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics: The Center works to ensure that students are knowledgeable about the principles of medical ethics related to their professional activities. They are expected to be able to identify, analyze and resolve moral conflicts that arise in the care of a patient. The program helps heighten students’ sensitivity to the patient’s experience and preserve their innate empathy.

University of Virginia

• Center for Health Humanities and Ethics: The UVA Center for Health Humanities & Ethics is a diverse interprofessional community of scholars, teachers, and practitioners whose interests in the human dimensions of illness, health, and health care bridge clinical and social sciences, arts and humanities, ethics and law, philosophy and religion. The center offers ethics and humanities education for medical students, residents, and faculty in many different formats and venues. In addition, Center faculty teach graduate and undergraduate courses in biomedical ethics and humanities across a number of UVA schools and programs.

Medical College of Wisconsin

• Medical Humanities Program: The MCW Medical Humanities Program, founded in 2006, is dedicated to professionalism, communication, empathy and reflection, through education in literature, medical history, the visual and performing arts and the social sciences.

Yale University

• Undergraduate Major in History of Science, Medicine and Public Health: The undergraduate major in History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health is an interdisciplinary program that focuses on how different forms of knowledge and technology have been created in various times, places, and cultures, and how they have shaped the modern world.

• History of Science and Medicine Program: The History of Science and Medicine Program (HSHM) is a semi-autonomous graduate track within the Department of History. HSHM students are awarded degrees in History with a concentration in the History of Science and Medicine, and they are fully fledged members of the History Department. Most students in the HSHM program are pursuing a PhD, which may be combined with concurrent enrolment in an MD or JD program (at Yale or elsewhere). A one-year MA degree is also available.

University of Aberdeen

• Medical Humanities, Student Selected Component: Medical Humanities is a long standing and integral part of the curriculum at the University of Aberdeen. It aims to give students an alternative perspective on medicine, healthcare, illness, or disability. This is achieved by studies in an extensive range of Humanities subjects including anthropology, economics, history, sociology, educational studies, divinity, art and music. It also offers languages, including introductory level French, German, Gaelic and Spanish, to prepare students for working in regions where these languages are spoken.

Birbeck, University of London

• Birbeck Centre for Medical Humanities: Birkbeck offers both taught and research postgraduate degrees, with a unique focus on the application of critical ideas from the humanities to clinical practice and patient care. Our postgraduate programmes in Medical Humanities draw together the emergent fields of medical humanities and intercultural medicine to explore and develop the lived experience of clinicians in the everyday complexities of real-life clinical settings as they interact with patients and cultures.

University of Bristol

• Intercalated BA in Medical Humanities: This course, run jointly with the Department of English, is a one-year course focusing on the contribution of humanities to the accomplished practice of medicine and medical research. Our aim is to produce better doctors: emotionally and cognitively intelligent, culturally aware and philosophically inquiring.

University of Exeter

• Medical School: A legacy of the Peninsula Medical School and Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, Exeter University medical school runs the most advanced core and integrated medical humanities programme in any medical school. The medical humanities are integrated into provision and do not warrant a separate website. There is vibrant research in the field, linking with Medical Humanities across Centres at the University of Exeter. A large range of Special Study Components (SSCs) run in Years 1, 2 and 4, with a longitudinal SSC in Year 4 taken by all students that results in an assessed piece of work and a student-run conference.

University of Glasgow

• Medical Humanities Research Network Scotland: MHRNS is funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and aims to enable greater and more sustained collaborative research within Scotland in the medical humanities. Dr. David Shuttleton and Dr. Gavin Miller, co-directors of the recently established Centre for the Medical Humanities at the University of Glasgow, will be leading the network over the next two years. MHRNS brings together a core of 16 medical humanities researchers and practitioners from institutions across Scotland. These collaborators, along with invited guests, will participate in a series of four research workshops, each addressing one of the network’s four main research themes: (1) “Why Historicise?”; (2) “Theory into Practice”; (3) “Mental Health”; and (4) “Dependency”. Additionally, two larger symposia, each focusing upon two of the research themes, will be open to the wider academic and medical communities, and two public lectures will be open to the general public. These events will be held at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Keele University

• Intercalate BSc and Medical Degree in Medical Humanities: Medical Humanities is an expanding area of study which aims to provide an appreciation of the cultural and historical contexts of medicine, via an investigation of literary, filmic and historical texts which address connections between disease, the individual patient or practitioner, and the practice of medicine. At Keele it offers medical students the opportunity to intercalate and graduate with a BSc in addition to their medical degree. Taught modules in humanities are typically assessed via a range of written tasks including essays and examinations. Humanities modules are taught via lectures and seminars. They also entail a lot of reading. There are fewer, hands-on practical sessions than you will be used to in clinical medicine. Much more of your time is self-directed. This means students of medical humanities must quickly acquire skills in academic time-management and fluent writing; however, tutors will be ready and willing to support you in making the transition from medicine to humanities.

University of Kent

• MA in Medical Humanities: In this MA programme, you are introduced to many questions asked about medicine from within the humanities. For example, you have the opportunity to examine the history of Western medicine and to consider how medical practice is presented in, and shaped by, literature and the arts. You have the chance to reflect on what is involved in classifying something as a disease or an abnormal mental state, and to explore various ethical and legal problems that arise within medicine. You also learn about the history of the medical humanities as a field and the debates that have surrounded its identity and role.

• Centre for the Study of Health, Science and Environment: The Centre is committed to a vision of the history of medicine, history of medical ethics and medical humanities, science and environment that is chronologically expansive, thematically and geographically diverse, and which draws upon a wide range of sources, disciplines and expertise. As historians of medicine, health, science and the environment, we offer a unique and intellectually exciting insight into the making of scientific knowledge. The Centre is diverse, covering the physical and biomedical sciences, history of medicine, history of medical ethics and medical humanities technology, the environment, literature, and science communication. We are full-time staff and postgraduate students. We are intellectually curious and active scholars, committed to discussion and support of one another’s research.

Leeds University

• Medical Humanities Research Group: The Medical Humanities Research Group brings together researchers who work on a broad range of topics across the interaction between literature/culture and medicine and health. Our focus is interdisciplinary, and we have strong connections with colleagues in medical engineering, health sciences and primary care, as well as service users across the city, particularly through the University’s Centre for Medical Humanities. The Centre is one of the most active of its kind in the UK, organising conferences, workshops and career training and development sessions.

University College London

• Health Humanities Centre: UCL Health Humanities Centre draws together staff from different disciplines, departments and faculties engaged in research and teaching on matters relating to health, illness and well-being. It provides a UCL forum for teaching and research in the health humanities, through Masters programmes, conferences, seminars, workshops, and public engagement. It draws upon upon UCL's disciplinary strengths, while fostering further interdisciplinary collaborations.

Imperial College London

• Intercalated BSc in Humanities, Philosophy and Law: The intercalated BSc in Medical Sciences with Humanities, Philosophy and Law is a unique course that integrates approaches from medical science, ethics, law, philosophy, history and the arts. This BSc provides an intellectually stimulating and inventive learning opportunity for students who care about core values of medicine in the changing landscape of healthcare provision. The cultural contexts of medical science will be a key theme throughout the course.

University of Manchester

• Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine: Founded in 1986, we are the largest British group devoted to integrated historical studies of science, technology and medicine, medical humanities, and science communication. We provide a focus for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Science Communication, and Medical Humanities at the University of Manchester, in research, teaching and public engagement. We offer a range of undergraduate and postgraduate study programmes and course options, and train PhD and MPhil students.

University of Nottingham

• Health Humanities Research Group: Health humanities is a field pioneered at Nottingham and involves research investigating the relationship between arts, humanities, healthcare, health and well-being. Our studies focus on health in general but specifically mental health in relation to: language, discourse and narrative; literary and media representations; creative practices in the arts and performing arts (such as music, theatre, visual arts, dance, yoga, sculpture, photography and storytelling); built environment; religion and spirituality; philosophy and history.

University of Oxford

• The Oxford Research Centre in Humanities (TORCH): TORCH is based at the historic Radcliffe Humanities Building. The building was formerly the Radcliffe Infirmary, which was Oxford’s first hospital and was open from 1770 to 2007. It is fitting that a centre that supports research that brings the sciences and arts together should be based in an old hospital. Indeed, one of TORCH’s major initial programmes is a collaborative venture called Medicine, Science and the Humanities which, according to Prof. Mark Harrison, the programme director, “will produce the world’s largest forum for Medical Humanities.”

University of Plymouth

• Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry: A legacy of the Peninsula Medical School and Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, runs the most advanced core and integrated medical humanities programme in any medical school (with University of Exeter Medical School). The medical and dental humanities are integrated into provision and do not warrant a separate website. There is vibrant research in the field. A large range of Special Study Components (SSCs) run in Years 1, 2 and 4, with a longitudinal SSC in Year 4 taken by all students that results in an assessed piece of work and a student-run conference.

University of Sheffield

• Medical Humanities: The interface between medicine and science on the one hand, and the arts and social sciences on the other hand, is one of the most exciting and important in modern academic life, offering unrivalled potential for multi-disciplinary work, policymaking, and public life. It is this interface which concerns Medical Humanities Sheffield. The Centre brings together over 100 colleagues from the Faculties of Medicine, Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and Engineering. It also involves clinicians in the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, the Children’s Hospital, and Primary Care. The distinction we make in Sheffield between ‘medical humanities’ as an interface between disciplines, as opposed to a discipline in its own right, is important. In Sheffield we regard medical humanities as a place where experts from disparate fields of knowledge can converge, collaborate, discuss, and enjoy new and productive synergies and syntheses. As such, we do not seek to delimit and restrict our definition of ‘medical humanities’ according to particular methodologies and approaches. Rather we regard MHS as a capacious and collaborative vehicle for exploring all issues relating to the well-being of mind and body in societies past and present. Put simply, our fundamental mission is to locate, understand, and privilege what it is to be ‘human’.

University of Southampton

• Medical Humanities Student Selected Unit, Medical Education: A Medical Humanities Student Selected Unit (SSU) within the BM5 curriculum. It is compulsory but students choose from a number of options through which to explore human experiences of health and illness and apply these insights to clinical practice. Options are facilitated by teachers from across and outside of the university and include: portraiture, life drawing, multi-media art, photography, film, creative writing, drama, ethics through drama, music and medical history.

Swansea University

• MPhil/PhD in Health Humanities: Our MPhil/PhD programme in Health Humanities offers the opportunity to study with world-leading academics in the health humanities, researching issues related to health and illness from the humanities and social sciences in the exciting research community at the College of Human and Health Sciences.

The University of Dublin

Trinity College Dublin Medical and Health Humanities Initiative: The Trinity College Dublin Medical and Health Humanities Initiative brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines including history, philosophy, sociology, drama, health sciences, religion, cultural studies, arts, literature and languages. The mission statement of the Trinity College Dublin Medical and Health Humanities initiative: To cultivate a richer understanding of the interactions and synergies between practices and discourses of wellness, health or medicine and the arts, humanities or culture through interdisciplinary research and education.

University of Hong Kong, CHina

• Centre for the Humanities and Medicine: The Centre for the Humanities and Medicine was established in 2009 as a joint initiative between the Faculty of Arts and the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at The University of Hong Kong. As an economic and cultural hub for East and Southeast Asia, at the forefront of research in Medicine and the Arts, Hong Kong provides a strategic setting for rethinking global networks of knowledge. The Centre for the Humanities and Medicine at Hong Kong is the first institution of its kind in Asia, and one of the few in the world with a mission to foster interdisciplinary research and teaching in relation to three broad interconnected themes: the challenges posed by the translation of biomedical technologies into society; the relationship between disease, health, culture and society; and the humanization of our understanding and practice of medicine. Aside from its research strand, the Centre has a commitment to the development of cross-disciplinary teaching at The University of Hong Kong and to knowledge exchange.

University of Otago, New zealand

• Humanities in Health Sciences and Medicine: Offers courses to undergraduate students in Health Sciences and electives to medical students.

The University of Sydney, Australia

• Sydney Health Ethics: Sydney Health Ethics conducts research and teaching in bioethics and health-related social science using multidisciplinary methods. Our mission is to achieve a positive social impact by engaging in academic and public conversations about the ethics of health and wellbeing. We produce rigorous, critical and engaged ethics and social research, teach bioethics and qualitative research methods and work with communities locally, nationally and internationally to understand and address real-world issues.

University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

• Medical Humanities at WiSER: In 2012 Catherine Burns and colleagues at Wits established a medical humanities research interest group and centre of excellence based at WiSER. Interest in the field has resulted in an extensive group of academics and professionals from the health sciences – medicine, nursing, public health and allied schools and departments – as well as from the social sciences and humanities, the Law School, and the Wits School of Arts joining our reading groups and participating in our events. Many scholars in the US and Britain work on medical humanities in African or southern contexts, in imperial, postcolonial and other global frames, however, WiSER represents the first African research team.