- The Institute for Medical & Health Humanities and Artistic Research combines approaches from Medical & Health Humanities and artistic research to develop and advance innovative perspectives on modes of perception of health-related issues as well as concepts and practices in medical cultures. The Institute for Medical & Health Humanities and Artistic Research is a space and forum for transdisciplinary approaches and research practices. It initiates, designs and conducts research projects, builds project-related collaborations and works in multi-perspective teams on the further development of research and dissemination strategies that are suitable for communicating their research results beyond scientific communities.
- The Institute represents a critical and decidedly cultural-scientific position in the field of Medical & Health Humanities. Cultural forms, material cultures, artistic practices, corporeality and sensual perception of all actors involved in the context of medical cultures are at the center of the research questions addressed by the Institute’s projects.
- It is expected that by linking the aforementioned research approaches of the Medical & Health Humanities with those of artistic research, a “different”, situated and embodied knowledge can be applied, tested and reflected in research and communication processes.
- By linking this approach to the modes of perception and cognition that are characteristic of artistic research, aesthetic, medial and embodied dimensions of the perception of health and illness can be explored, thematized, brought into play and questioned, as well as the social and sensual experiences of inclusion and exclusion that result from them. The interplay of artistic and cultural-scientific research methods can thus help to bring sensual perception in relation to meaning-making in different medical contexts and to make them fruitful in this relationship of tension.
- Concrete aims of the institute are
- to develop research projects in the Medical & Health Humanities that combine cultural studies research questions and methods with artistic research methods, and to conduct them with partner institutions and actors from the cultural sciences, the medical and health-related disciplines, the field of artistic practices (all art forms), as well as with patients, relatives and other groups of affected persons;
- to contribute to the establishment and further development of the inter- and transdisciplinary work and research field of Medical & Health Humanities in the German-speaking area and to promote the exchange with as well as the networking of partner institutions on a national and international level;
- to develop innovative communication and publication formats that address different publics, based on the special link between the Medical & Health Humanities and artistic research strategies and the Institute’s research projects;
- to develop seminar and continuing education programs for medical, health-related, and counseling education and training contexts based on artistic/research/art-based approaches.