Blog by Dr. Aneesh Basheer and Dr. Magi Murugan A flash mob refers to a group of individuals who gather at a common place to create awareness or sensitize an audience to some topic usually with no prior information to the latter. Flash mobs have become common in several fields including social awareness programs, business, […]
Latest articles
Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction [book review]
Anne Whitehead, Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017) 224 pages, £75.00 ISBN 9780748686186 (Paperback forthcoming in May 2019). by Marie Allitt. In order to unravel the concept of empathy, Anne Whitehead engages with many of the increasingly relevant and problematic topics in both medicine and medical humanities today, […]
Soaring but Souring Sugar: Type 2 Diabetes in Kerala
In this post, Professor Kesavan Rajasekharan Nayar discusses complexity with respect to the public health profile of Kerala, considered as one of the healthiest states in India. This complexity is indeed worrisome and a humanitarian perspective which addresses the psychological and economic fallouts of the health scenario is required. Societies which have been proclaimed as […]
Biomedicine and the Humanities: Growing Pains
In this article for December’s Special Issue, Hume, Mulemi, and Sadok take a look at the unique challenges facing humanities researchers in clinical and community health settings in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa. Their work considers these experiences within the broader context—but our broader context of disciplinary ’ethnocentrism’ that hampers the development of knowledge in […]
Ethnographic Surprises and Crisis: Studying Clinician-Researchers in Johannesburg
by Renée van der Wiel My hope is that this poster might provide some light relief and a sense of community among those who have done in-depth social research in medical institutions. And, for those who have not, I hope the tool of humour here provides some insight into the emotional labour, tending towards existential […]
Medicine Meets Film: Dr Omneya Okasha Shares with Dr Khalid Ali Her Journey From Dentistry to Film Making
Today we are excited to present a new podcast as a “special extra” for January 2019. In this interview Medical Humanities film correspondent Khalid Ali speaks with Dr Omneya Okasha. Okasha is a dentist with a passion for film developed in early childhood. Bonding with characters on screen took her on a journey of self-discovery, personal […]
Walking Up Hills, Through History, And In-Between Disciplines: MHH And Health Sciences Education At The Tip Of Africa
by Carla Tsampiras Celebration, frustration, contestation, and imagination all manifest themselves when examining the evolution of the field of Medical and Health Humanities (MHH) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). That this field has been growing at the same time as access to, inclusion in, and social justice issues linked to higher education have […]
Field Notes in the Clinic on Medicine, Anthropology and Pedagogy in South Africa
by Michelle Pentecost In this commentary I draw on my experience working as a medical doctor and an anthropologist to explore what different disciplinary orientations allow us to ‘see’ in clinical settings. I argue that the anthropological skills of observation, privileging relationship, and of learning to foreground social context, have much to offer for teaching […]
Interview: Nolwazi Mkhwanazi and Emmanuel Babatunde Omobowale, 30th October 2018
Emmanuel Babatunde Omobowale is Nigeria’s first Professor of Literature and Medicine, a position he has held since 2010. From 2012 to 2017 he was also head of the Department of English at the University of Ibadan. Given that Medical Humanities is a nascent field in Africa, I am interested in the Nigerian experience of developing […]
Beyond the Lab: Eh!woza and Knowing Tuberculosis
by Bianca Masuku, Anastasia Koch, Ed Young, Digby Warner and Nolwazi Mkhwanazi The accompanying podcast offers a reflection on Eh!woza, a youth-based community engagement project focusing on tuberculosis (TB). Based in Cape Town, South Africa, Eh!woza functions as an interactive and interrogative platform, contrasting perspectives and concepts of TB as biomedical disease with personal experiences […]