We find ourselves in crisis.

In times of crisis, action is at once indispensable and impossible, demanding a whole focus of attention while being dependent on events resolving themselves, requiring front-line workers to intervene while knowing themselves to have severely limited influence and agency. The front line is essentially a conversation with often unknown and always unpredictable forces, whether in the context of a major health crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic, crises of citizenship like #blacklivesmatter and #transrightsarehumanrights, or their related crisis of imagining new futures. As a transdisciplinary field built upon allegiances and collaborations across the humanities, social sciences and medicine, medical humanities offers a unique space for conversation, exploration and possible resolution in the face of the profound challenges we face.

AMH invites you to join and contribute to our free online colloquies, which place two prominent speakers in conversation about their thoughts and experiences of working with crisis at the various front lines of medicine, policy and critical thought. Each colloquy focuses on a particular theme, and is organised as a 30-minute conversation, followed by an hour of public Q & A:

On Loss, 27th January 2021 (starts 7.30pm GMT)

Professor Zoë Playdon, Emeritus Professor of Medical Humanities, University of London in conversation with Dr Ajoy Thachil, Consultant Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. http://bit.ly/AMH-conversations-on-loss

On Futures, 24th February 2021 (starts 7.30pm GMT)

Professor Jane McNaughton, Director of Institute for Medical Humanities, University of Durham in conversation with Professor Arditi Lahiri, Vice President (Humanities), the British Academy. http://bit.ly/AMH-conversations-on-futures

On Community, 25th March 2021 (starts 7.30pm GMT)

Professor Ludmilla Jordanova, Department of History, University of Durham in conversation with Professor Trish Greenhalgh, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. http://bit.ly/AMH-conversations-on-community

Please note: These are free events. Places are limited and AMH members will be given priority.