About us
The Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities (DRP-MH) brings different groups of people together to collaborate in tackling barriers – of diversity, risk, evidence and scale – faced in medical humanities research. Based at Durham University in the UK, it aims to empower health and wellbeing researchers from different sectors, disciplines, and areas of expertise to co-develop new approaches to widespread health challenges.
Led by Angela Woods (Director) and Ben Alderson-Day (Co-director), the Platform is large in scale, global in reach, and innovative and experimental in its methods. Through international research networks, fellowships, and a wide range of voluntary and health sector partnerships, it will centre people with lived experience and people from marginalised communities as the co-creators of health research, including research on mental health and health inequalities.
Researchers on the Platform come from a wide range of arts and humanities and social science disciplines including Literary Studies, Psychology, Philosophy, History, Sport and Exercise Sciences, Education and Sociology.
Participants at the fourth Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities Lab Summit, March 2024.
Beyond Durham University, work on the Platform takes place across three physical sites including The Practice (St Anthony’s Health Centre – a GP practice in one of the most deprived areas of the UK), The WellSpring (ReCoCo – a radical peer led mental health recovery college based in Newcastle upon Tyne) and The Fesitval (Edinburgh International Book Festival).
The Platform also hosts six ‘method Labs’ with expertise in measurement, affect, cognition, narrative and visual arts. The Labs will generate new research questions on topics such as chronic pain, addiction, mental health, movement, neurodiversity and disability, as well as critiquing storytelling practices around health and human experience.
The DRP-MH is supported by Durham University’s Institute for Medical Humanities and funded by Wellcome until 2030.
Want to know more?
Film taken at the launch event for the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities, May 2024.
Download the transcript here.