Conference to explore interface between medicine, arts and humanities

The University of Leicester is hosting a conference to be addressed by Jed Mercurio, author of Bodies and creator of the TV series Cardiac Arrest.

The 8^th Annual Conference of the Association for Medical Humanities takes place at the University of Leicester from  11^th-13^th  July  2011

Doctor and celebrated poet and writer Dannie Abse will be holding a workshop entitled 'Poet in a White Coat', Mercurio's talk is on the Doctor as Antihero. 

Professor Laurie Maguire, from Magdalen College Oxford, will explore Shakespeare's guide to health and illness as it might be of use today, and Matthew Alexander from North Carolina, a leading authority on the use of cinema in medical education, will begin the conference with a workshop and plenary address on this subject.  

Professor David Gentilcore of the University of Leicester will speak on the establishment of the medical charlatans' practice in Renaissance Italy. Workshops cover substance abuse in the movies, medicine in comics, architecture in health, and photography and video of experiences in a heart and lung transplant unit. 

There are nearly 50 short papers accepted for presentation under themes of Dramatis personae (people), Plays and Plots (stories), and The Stage (settings and environments),  all discussing where aspects of each theme interfaces with the practice of healthcare past and present, and possibly the future as well. Several of the papers will be given by University of Leicester academics, giving a taste of the extent of research into areas of the medical humanities which has been going on there.  A few papers will be given by medical students, including some from Leicester.

Conference delegates will include doctors and other healthcare practitioners and educators, those from the worlds of theatre and other media, artists, architects, historians, lawyers, writers, and academics from many of the Arts and humanities disciplines. There will be representatives from throughout the UK, as well as the Republic of Ireland, Canada, the USA and Sri Lanka.