This online lecture series is designed to highlight the critical interdependencies and synergies between the humanities and medicine. Traditionally seen as separate realms – arts and sciences – this series demonstrates the power of their convergence in addressing some of the world's most pressing challenges.
Featuring distinguished researchers from the Circle U. Universities, this lecture series delves into how the synthesis of perspectives from medicine and the humanities is pivotal in tackling the key focus areas of the Circle U. alliance – climate change, democratic deficits, global health disparities, and the evolving challenges of artificial intelligence.
The field of medical humanities was initially developed to provide medical students with a grounding in literature, philosophy, art, music, history, and drama, enhancing their understanding of illness experiences and cultivating their empathy. However, the scope of medical humanities extends far beyond these initial benefits.
Medical humanities also introduces innovative ways to understand the intricate relationships between technological advancements, environmental disruptions, governance systems, lifestyle choices, and health – complex networks that cannot be fully explored by a single discipline but require a comprehensive bio-social approach.
Central to this effort is the concept of translation – broadly seen as an active process of dialogue, negotiation, and mutual transformation between different systems of knowledge.
The lecture series is tailored for students and scholars from any discipline eager to explore innovative and deeply interdisciplinary approaches to wide-ranging health issues and complex societal problems.
Open online lectures
Eivind Engebretsen, Professor of medical humanities, University of Oslo, Dean of the Circle U. Open Campus
Explore how the medical humanities can bridge the gap between evidence and action, using the SDGs as a key case study. To make this happen, we need a translational approach – one that connects insights from history, philosophy, and discourse analysis with scientific knowledge and practical efforts to address global challenges such as health equity, environmental sustainability, and social justice.
Watch lecture 1: Translational Health Humanities: Addressing the Challenge of Unimplementability
Céline Lefève, Professor of medical humanities, Université Paris Cité
This lecture explores how healthcare education can shape professionals not only as clinicians but also as psychological, ethical, social, and political beings. Drawing on a pedagogical approach that combines cinema, philosophy, and the social sciences, it demonstrates how this interdisciplinary alliance can help meet the complex challenges of training well-rounded healthcare practitioners.
Watch lecture 2: Medical humanities in medical education: Teaching the ethics of care through cinema
Elise Ricadat, Assoicate Professor in clinical psychology, Université Paris Cité
This lecture delves into what it truly means to live with – or after – treatment for two rare genetic diseases. It examines why, even after significant physical improvement, some patients struggle to feel fully alive again and reintegrate into life.
Watch lecture 3: The "REVIVRE" project: A French approach to research in medical humanities
Flora Smyth Zahra, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinarity & Innovation Dental Education, King’s College London
This lecture explores how healthcare professionals can be better prepared for the inherent uncertainty of clinical practice. It argues that medical education should go beyond facts to cultivate ethical, reflective, and creative practitioners by embracing the humanities – particularly philosophy, art, and literature.
Professor Monika Pietrzak-Franger, Chair and Professor of British Cultural and Literary Studies, University of Vienna
This lecture examines how media shapes public understanding of chronic illness – particularly Long Covid – during global crises. Drawing on cultural narratives and visual representations, she explores the intersections of health and media literacy through the lens of sustainability.
Student contributions
Chiara La Sala, University of Pisa
The climate crisis is a health crisis that requires a shift in medicine to treat the environment. I propose using the Translational Medical Humanities (TMH) framework to address the systemic causes of disease, as human health is inextricably linked to planetary health. This approach advocates for climate justice, acknowledging that the health impacts are worse on vulnerable communities.
Francesco Adami, University of Pisa
This video explores communication during the COVID-19 pandemic as both a form of care and a source of trauma, drawing on experiences from rural Italian Apennine communities. Through landscapes, stories, and medical practices, it shows how translation became essential when touch, proximity, and shared rituals were disrupted. Communication emerges as a cultural immune system – capable of protecting, but also isolating and wounding.
Amanda Dörler, October 2025
Grace Bolland, King’s College London
Inspired by perspectives of Trisha Greenhalgh and Eivind Engebretsen in The science‑policy relationship in times of crisis: An urgent call for a pragmatist turn, and the views of Toby Green and Thomas Fazi in The Covid Consensus. This lecture will explore a critique of relying on ‘scientism’ and the linear model of knowledge translation between ‘scientific truth’ and policy, looking specifically at the UK policy, based on scientific data, to restrict access to primary health care during the pandemic. Then exploring the ramifications of this policy and how if translational medical humanities had been adopted when bringing in this policy, the ramifications to the UK public and healthcare system could have been foreseen.
Tengku Teja Sari, King's College London
This video explores and discusses how female health faces conflicting narratives in healthcare and public policy, driven by an understated gap in research. It focuses on the potential role of Femtech and data-gathering health apps in collaborative knowledge creation, and the importance of narrative preparedness in accepting highly qualitative data that does not necessarily align with lab-produced scientific research. The video ends with some ideas on how to navigate female-specific health challenges such as period poverty and menopause beyond the way we do today.
Nicole Brucciani, University of Pisa
This video presents pandemics as a grand challenge that extends beyond medicine to include social, cultural, environmental, and ethical dimensions. Drawing on the COVID-19 experience, it argues that scientific data alone are insufficient, as pandemics are lived through fear, uncertainty, inequality, and culturally mediated narratives. The lecture proposes translational medical humanities as a key framework for bridging scientific evidence with human experience in order to develop more effective, inclusive, and sustainable responses to global health crises.
Alessia Tamberi, University of Pisa
True sustainability in healthcare requires integrating ecological stewardship with cultural empathy, ethical responsibility and emotional awareness. This video explores a holistic approach where caring for the planet is inseparable from caring for human health, demanding justice and compassion alongside biomedical progress. By bridging medicine and the humanities, the lecture highlights how ethical reflection and cultural narratives are essential for understanding planetary health.
Mio Teague, King’s College London
This video assesses the global impact of wildfires, and how wildfire prevention and response require a multidisciplinary approach. It also includes a discussion of how translational medical humanities concepts - for example, knowledge translation between scientists, policy makers and the community - are key to effectively managing wildfires. The project concludes with an examination of where current wildfire science scholarship (specifically Translational Wildfire Science and Shared Wildfire Governance) stands in encompassing the trans-disciplinary issue of wildfires.
