Events

Birkbeck hosts a lively and dynamic programme of regular and special events on the theme of medical humanities. For more details, please follow the links below. You can also search our website for ‘events’.

Reading Group

We hold a regular reading group which meets monthly throughout term time to explore key readings, ideas and materials in the field of medical humanities. Find more information on The Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group page.

Conferences, Workshops and Symposia 2018-2019

For more details of each event, please click on the links provided.


Conferences, Workshops and Symposia 2017-2018

For more details of each event, please click on the links provided.


Conferences, Workshops and Symposia 2016-17

For more details of each event, please click on the links provided.

  • Creative Writing and Mental Health: A new seminar series culminating in a one day conference that asks what can writers and teachers of Creative Writing learn from psychiatry, neuroscience, and other medical disciplines about the links between creativity and mental illness? Friday 28 April – Friday 26 May. Conference Saturday 27 May. Funded by a Birkbeck Wellcome Trust ISSF grant.
  • Theatres of Contagion: Infectious Performance: a two-day symposium examining the relationship between theatre and contagion from a range of humanities, medical, psychological and scientific perspectives, via diverse forms including drama, theatre, live art, dance, musical and cultural performance. Birkbeck, 11-12 May 2017. Funded by a Birkbeck Wellcome Trust ISSF grant.
  • Fluid Physicalities: Day conference, 10 March 2017. Funded by a Birkbeck Wellcome Trust ISSF grant.
  • Healing Spaces: Modern Architecture and the Body.This event marks the publication of the collected volume Healing Spaces, Modern Architecture and the Body, Ashgate Studies in Architecture (Routledge, 2016). Birkbeck, 3 February 2017.
  • Breath Catalogue, is a collaborative work by artist-scholars Kate Elswit and Megan Nicely, and data scientist/interaction designer Ben Gimpert, together with composer Daniel Thomas Davis and violist Stephanie Griffin. Presented by Corkscrew: practice based/led research at Birkbeck, 14 November 2016
  • Conceiving Histories, a new project lead by Isabel Davis in the department of English and Humanities, is taking part in the Being Human Festival 2016. Birkbeck, 23 November 2016
  • ‘What’s Critical About the Critical Medical Humanities?’. Lunchtime lecture with Angela Woods and Anne Whitehead introducing the recently published Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities. Birkbeck, 6 October 2016

Conferences, Workshops and Symposia 2015-16

For more details of each event, please click on the links provided.

  • Fluid Physicalities: a new research seminar convened at Birkbeck College and funded by the Wellcome Trust. We will meet throughout 2016 and explore all manner of bodily fluids and their cultural, historical, and phenomenological aspects.
  • Medical Objects: An Interdisciplinary Enquiry. Funded by a Wellcome Trust ISSF grant, this project encompasses a medical horror film season and a one-day workshop on 13 July 2016 at Birkbeck’s School of Arts.
  • Embarrassing Bodies: Feeling Self-Conscious in the Nineteenth Century. Funded by a Wellcome Trust ISSF grant, this one-day symposium will explore embarrassing moments in the nineteenth century. Friday 17th June 2016, Birkbeck, University of London.
  • Victorian Psychology Now. Funded by a Wellcome Trust ISSF grant, this symposium and reading group explores new critical directions for researching Victorian psychology. Friday 9 and Saturday 10 June, Birkbeck, University of London.
  • CHASE Medical Humanities Network inaugural workshop. A halfday workshop exploring research connections and postgraduate training provision. 13 May 2016, School of Arts, Birkbeck.

For details of more past events, please click here.

Image above: Open air propaganda Cinemotor, Bermondsey (1938)
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images, L0074598