Health and wellbeing – physical and mental, human and animal, past and present – preoccupies societies. The
expanding discipline of medical humanities seeks to improve health by understanding human experience. In
the College of arts and humanities, an interdisciplinary group explores the social, economic, scientific, political
and geopolitical, environmental and cultural framings of health and wellbeing. We consider how states,
communities, and individuals promote, regulate, and conceptualise health, medicine and wellbeing, and the
intersections with categories such as gender, sexuality, race, religion, and ethnicity.

Our group examines varieties of cultural and linguistic representations of these matters and encourages critical engagement and reflection. Scholars consider research questions on diverse chronological and geographical scales, and in various cultural settings.

Theme Members

Projects, News and Events

• Dr Claas Kirchhelle has been awarded a prestigious IRC/AHRC Digital Humanities Initiative award
• Catherine Cox wins UCD Research 2020 Impact Competition
• MindReading and RCPI present a unique online event
• UCD’s Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland and Brokentalkers win 'Best Production' for 'The Examination' at the Irish Times Theatre Awards
• Dr Claas Kirchhelle has been awarded a prestigious Wellcome Trust University Award in Humanities and Social Sciences
• 'Living Inside' exhibition opens at Kilmainham Gaol
• UCD Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland Seminar Series 2019-20
• MindReading - Mental Health and the Written word
• Cultures of Intoxication: Contextualising Alcohol & Drug Use, Past & Present
• Worrying about the Field of the History of Emotions in Ireland
• Framing Aging: A Clinical, Cultural & Social Dialogue 
• In Extremis: The Limits of Life, Death and Consciousness in the Long Nineteenth Century
• Prisoners, Medical Care and Entitlement to Health in England and Ireland, 1850-2000
• Enslaved Viruses: Bacteriophages, Infectious Disease and International Health, 1920–2006
• Contagion, Biopolitics and Cultural Memory
• Metaphoric Stammers and Embodied Speakers: Connecting Clinical, Cultural and Creative Practice in the area of Dysfluent Speech
• Child Sexual Abuse in Contemporary Culture: Developing Cultural Studies Approaches