Material Medical Humanities Collective

The Material Medical Humanities Collective is a new, research-led initiative led by the Visual and Material Lab at the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities at Durham University, in collaboration with the Centre for Medical and Health Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London.

The collective seeks to investigate the relationships between materiality – understood in the widest possible sense – and the medical and health humanities. Taking objects, environments, infrastructures, technologies, and material practices seriously as sites of knowledge, we hope to explore together what might be called a material medical humanities: not a settled field, but an emerging constellation of questions, sensibilities, and experimental approaches.

We hope that this emerging work will enable new partnerships, collaborative projects, and interdisciplinary, cross-region investigations of the role of material culture and materiality across medicine and health.

While the Collective’s co-leads are based in the UK, our events will be scheduled to maximise attendance from other time zones.

A brightly-coloured artwork featuring the microscopic detail of a mitochondrial network, a series of oval shapes with yellow dots in the middle

‘Mitochondria network‘ (cellular level art, paint on silk, digitised), by Odra Noel (licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0).

Collective Co-leads

  • Dr Harriet Barratt, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Visual and Material Medical Humanities, Visual and Material Lab, Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities, Durham University
  • Dr Anna Jamieson, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Birmingham
  • Dr Rebecca Whiteley, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Birmingham
  • Dr Fiona Johnstone, Assistant Professor in the Visual Medical Humanities and Lead of the Visual and Material Lab, Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities, Durham University
  • Professor Suzannah Biernoff, Professor of Visual Culture, Birkbeck, University of London.

Upcoming Events

We warmly invite researchers, curators and other interested professionals from across the globe to express your interest in joining the launch workshop of the Material Medical Humanities Collective on Monday 14th December 2026 (application deadline: Wednesday 14th October 2026). At this collaborative online event, we will work together to identify key themes and build on synergies across disciplines and regions. In order to support in-depth collaborative discussion, workshop spaces may need to be limited; we will let you know if we are able to offer you a space by Monday 26th October at the latest.

Please register your interest in the Collective’s first collaborative workshop using this form. This will also give you the option of signing up to our mailing list for future events.

You might also be interested in the Visual and Material Lab’s wider research and partnership activities. Sign up to the Visual and Material Lab mailing list.