Health Humanities

Research at the intersection of humanities, medicine, health, education and practice

Health and Medical Humanities is a rapidly evolving field that provides an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the meaning of health, illness and disease for people in the context of the social worlds in which they live and work.

Health Humanities focuses more on meaning-making than measurement. It encompasses medical humanities and the fields of narrative medicine, history of medicine, culture studies, technology, medical anthropology, medical sociology, ethics, economics, philosophy, literature, the arts and music.

By bringing humanities scholars together with clinicians, educators and medical scientists, this field is highly innovative and likely to make a significant impact in shaping the future direction of healthcare for our communities.

Increasingly, evidence suggests that inclusion of the humanities and the arts in the sphere of health has the potential to improve individual, health system and population health outcomes.

With the commencement of the first Australian undergraduate major in Humanities for Health and Medicine in the School of Allied Health at UWA, it is timely and appropriate for us to bring together experienced medical sociologists, health humanities researchers and health professions educators to form collaborations in education, scholarship and practice through the UWA Centre for Health Humanities.

Our team

Health Humanities Symposium

The UWA School of Allied Health, Health Professions Education and Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery are delighted to invite academics and practitioners to the UWA Health Humanities Research Group Symposium on Friday, 21 October 2022. This one-day hybrid symposium will share examples of local, national and international Health Humanities research and also involve hands-on workshops illustrating educational approaches of Narrative Medicine and Object Based Learning.

Learn more

Our collaborators

Our mission is to build strong local, national, and international collaborations linking our work to the global community. 
This discipline sees UWA staff collaborate with academics from all over the world.

  • Professor Jane Macnaughton, Durham University
  • Assistant Professor Anna Harris, Maastricht University
  • Professor Pamela Brett Maclean, University of Alberta
  • Dr Claire Hooker, University of Sydney
  • Professor Stephen Reid, University of Cape Town
  • Professor Sarah Nettleton, University of York
  • Clinical Associate Clayton Baker, University of Rochester
  • Dr Karen Scott, University of Sydney
  • Dr Catherine Noske, University of Western Australia
  • Dr Claire Hansen, James Cook University
  • Dr Daniel Vuillermin, Peking University
  • Dr Farah Noya, Pattimura University
  • Kirsty Freeman, Duke-NUS, Singapore

Our research projects

The research projects undertaken by our academics and our collaborators reflect the unique and diverse methods used by researchers in this interdisciplinary field. Below are a selection of the projects we are working on at present. We welcome enquiries from potential collaborators and research candidates.

UWA Medical Humanities Network

Contact our team