This week the Discovery Research Platform welcomed 21 PhD students from five continents and nine different countries – including South Africa, India, Australia, the United States, Canada, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and the UK – to Durham for the Queer Methodologies in Medical Humanities PhD School. Over three days of masterclasses, creative workshops, reading groups and film screenings, we explored how queer theory and praxis can shape health humanities research.
With a focus on creative methods and researcher self-reflexivity, teaching sessions discussed graphic narratives methods for co-producing research on everyday practices of trans-individuality and intersectional histories of HIV/AIDS activism; the affordances of autoethnography as queer methodology for health scholarship; questions of affect, ethics and safety in relation to queer archives in South Africa; intersectional frameworks for exploring gender-affirming healthcare for trans and gender-diverse individuals; and zine-making as a tool for queering the clinical space.
With a focus on creative methods and researcher self-reflexivity, teaching sessions discussed graphic narratives methods for co-producing research on everyday practices of trans-individuality and intersectional histories of HIV/AIDS activism; the affordances of autoethnography as queer methodology for health scholarship; questions of affect, ethics and safety in relation to queer archives in South Africa; intersectional frameworks for exploring gender-affirming healthcare for trans and gender-diverse individuals; and zine-making as a tool for queering the clinical space.
We’d like to offer a huge thanks to guest tutors João Florêncio and Edyta Just (Linköping), Sage Brice (Durham), Nikolaos Papadogiannis (Stirling), Carla Tsampiras (UCT), Landa Mabenge (UCT), Benjamin Dalton (Lancaster) and Chase Ledin (Edinburgh), as well as our facilitators Fiona Johnstone and David Woodhead PhD.
‘Queer Methodologies’ was the second in a series of four PhD School delivered as a reciprocal commitment between Linköping University and Durham University to provide education and training to PhD students in order to build medical humanities as a field.
It was funded by the Wellcome Trust, 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 Linköping University in 2026.
