Last week we welcomed 20 doctoral students from across the globe to Vadstena in Sweden for our Medical Humanities PhD Summer School, co-delivered by Jelmer Brüggemann, Lisa Guntram, Veronica Heney and Fiona Johnstone.
The PhD School focused on the theme of ‘Embodiment’, bringing together PhD researchers from more than 10 countries, including Nigeria, China, India, the Netherlands, Sweden, the USA and the UK, to explore interdisciplinary and cross-sector perspectives on bodies and embodiment. Over three days of expert-led sessions, workshops, mentoring, and peer exchange, the participants developed new theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding health, illness, pain and lived experience.
We’d like to offer a huge thanks to guest speakers Edyta Just (Linköping University), Coreen McGuire (Durham University), Arya Thampuran (Durham University) and Kristin Zeiler (Linköping University).
This was the third in a series of four international PhD Schools delivered as part of a reciprocal commitment between Linköping and Durham Universities to provide education and training to PhD students in order to grow medical humanities as a field.
Our first PhD School focused on ‘Interdisciplinarity’ and the second on ‘Queer Methodologies in Medical Humanities’.
The PhD Schools are funded by Wellcome, as part of the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities at Durham University, and the Centre for Medical Humanities and Bioethics (CMHB) at Linköping University.
The next PhD school will be hosted by Durham University in 2027. You can download the PhD Summer School programme here: Medical Humanities International Summer School 2026: Bodies and Embodiment in Critical Medical Humanities.
