Major new funding to investigate the impact of medicine in human culture
24 July 2008
Over five years, King’s College London will receive about £2 million, and Durham University around £1.8m. The grants will each be used to establish a centre of excellence in the emerging field of medical humanities.
Drawing on research areas such as philosophy, literature and the arts as well as medicine, nursing and psychiatry, King’s and Durham will extend their existing research programmes in medical humanities and help to develop the field internationally.
Professor Martyn Evans and colleagues at the Centre for Arts and Humanities in Health and Medicine at Durham University will examine ‘Medicine and Human Flourishing’ - a programme of research aimed at understanding the human side of medicine, exploring in particular the relationship of health and medicine to wider notions of wellbeing. They will examine the place of creativity and the arts in contributing to healthy lives.
At King’s, Professor Brian Hurwitz and colleagues at the Centre for Health Sciences and the Humanities will study ‘The Boundaries of Illness’ - looking at personal and cultural representations of health and illness and the boundaries between them. They will explore people’s experiences of health and their responses to illness.
Clare Matterson, the Wellcome Trust’s Director of Medicine, Society and History, said: “These are the first major grants that the Wellcome Trust has supported in Medical Humanities. We supported this area because of its potential to help us to reflect upon and critically evaluate how people experience medical practice, illness and health offering the potential to inform medical practice.
“With this considerable level of funding, the successful groups can increase capacity in this area, develop future generations of researchers and build on their existing UK and international collaborations, making the UK a world-leader not only in biomedical science, but also in research examining the varied experiences and understandings of medicine in our society.”
Image: A man recuperating in bed at a receiving house of the Royal Humane Society, after resuscitation by W Hawes and J C Lettsom from near-drowning. Watercolour by Robert Smirke; Wellcome Library.
Contact
Michael Regnier
Media Officer
Wellcome Trust
T +44 (0)20 7611 7262
E
m.regnier@wellcome.ac.uk
Notes for editors
The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending over £600m each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.
Durham University is a world-class university in two locations - in the city of Durham and at its Queen's Campus in Stockton. Durham consistently ranks among the top universities in the world, and in the top ten of UK university league tables. It has over 15 000 students from over 120 countries, a turnover of £200m and over 3000 staff. The University is collegiate, providing social and welfare facilities through 16 colleges.
Academic teaching and research programmes are delivered through departments contained within three faculties: Arts and Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences and Health.
King’s College London is one of the top 25 universities in the world (Times Higher 2007) and the fourth oldest in England. A research-led university based in the heart of London, King's has 19 300 students from more than 130 countries, and 5000 employees. King's has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. The College is in the top group of UK universities for research earnings and has an annual income of approximately £400m. An investment of £500m has been made in the redevelopment of its estate.
King's has a particularly distinguished reputation in the humanities, law, social sciences, the health sciences, natural sciences and engineering, and has played a major role in many of the advances that have shaped modern life, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA. It is the largest centre for the education of healthcare professionals in Europe and is home to five Medical Research Council Centres - more than any other university.
For further information visit the Academic Health Sciences Centre website.