Earlier this month colleagues and partners from the voluntary and health sectors and researchers from our own academic community joined us to celebrate the achievements of our 2025-26 Medical Humanities in Practice cohort.
Developed by Evelyn Tehrani with input and advice from our Strategic Engagement Group, the Medical Humanities in Practice Research Fellowship scheme begins from the recognition that many of the most important questions about health and wellbeing emerge directly from practice. They arise through lived experiences, in community settings, conversations with patients, and in front line services. However, practitioners often do not have the opportunity to lead research themselves, whether that be due to lack of funding, time, research experience, enabling research environments, the right methods or because these questions are thought to fall outside the scope of business-critical services.
Our scheme is designed to change this by supporting practitioners to undertake research alongside their professional work, to engage with different perspectives, and to enable them to draw on the rich, reflective and critical perspectives of the medical humanities. This year’s pilot programme was a huge success, demonstrating the value and potential of cross-sector collaboration and knowledge exchange in health research.
Novel research projects
The highlight of the celebration event was hearing directly from the first cohort of Medical Humanities In Practice Fellows.
Judith Holliday, who is Deputy Director of Research at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust (MYTT) and Chair of the Wakefield Research Hub, kicked off the session with preliminary findings from her research on why women from deprived areas in Wakefield are less likely to participate in health research. Her research used the Born and Bred in Wakefield (BaBi) study as a case study, and included observation in maternity clinics and four co-production workshops with local women’s groups where novel methods drawing on journey mapping and photo elicitation were trialled and refined.
Shayla Schlossenberg, current Head of the Drugs Service at Release, then shared their research on how drug user activists recall and narrate their involvement in the British harm reduction movement. Their project seeks to better develop a history of drug user activism in the UK from the 1960s to today, which platforms diverse voices and perspectives and prioritises learnings from members of the movement who could not be credited in their time due to the risks they faced relating to community-specific experiences of stigma, surveillance and criminalisation. Shalya explained how they had drawn on concepts such as crip time and used counter-mapping techniques to bring medical humanities perspectives and methods into their work with activists.
Next up was Estelle Verdi, the Principal Counselling Psychologist and Service Lead for the West Yorkshire Maternal Mental Health Service – Paths at South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. Estelle’s research project invited Muslim women to give voice to their experiences of baby loss through creative methods such as paper cutting and Kintsugi – the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. Many of the women in Estelle’s workshops, which were facilitated by artist Sofie Layton and Mary Robson, reflected that Kintsugi resonated strongly with the religious theme of getting stronger through adversity.
Finally, Phil Samba, who is project co-ordinator for research and community knowledge generation at The Love Tank, spoke of his research into the opportunities presented by long-acting injectable PrEP for Black Queer men, and the barriers they can identify to its provision. Phil’s project is proceeding through four culturally sensitive community knowledge dinners with groups of Black Queer men of different ages. He is also exploring whether community knowledge dinners are a useful research tool for HIV and sexual health research more generally.
All the Fellows were presented with certificates by Steven Cobb, Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at Durham University, to thank them for their contribution to the pilot scheme.
From left to right: Steven Cobb, Phil Samba, Shayla Schlossenberg, Judith Holliday, Evelyn Tehrani, Estelle Verdi.
Next Steps
Congratulations to all our Fellows for everything they have achieved this year! We can’t wait to hear what happens next in your research and career journeys.
We have also welcomed a new cohort of Medical Humanities in Practice Fellows from the health and voluntary and community sectors to Durham University for the 2026-27 academic year. You can find out more about their research projects in these written interviews:
Fouyiza Asim | Maddie Rose-Carbone | David McQuillan | Sophie-Jo Peel | Kate Quinn | Sam Slatcher
