Mental Health Humanities: People

Hareth is a Professor of health economics. He holds a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award (2020-2024) to research investments in mental health promotion in schools and workplaces. 

Hareth’s research interests include the measurement of wellbeing and preferences, the role of family (informal) care in the economic evaluation and decision-making, the economics of mental health, and ...

I am a philosopher of the cognitive sciences, focusing on the philosophy of psychology and psychiatry. I am also interested in some issues in biomedical ethics. I am the Editor in Chief of Philosophical Psychology.

My main interests lie in the strengths and limitations of human cognition and agency, investigating faulty reasoning and irrational beliefs, delusions, confabulations, distorted ...

Matthew is an academic psychiatrist and Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University.  He is a leader in the field of early psychosis and in the philosophy and ethics of mental health.

Dr Gilles de Wildt is a GP and Global Health Academic. From 2011 to 2022, he led the Intercalated BMedSc programme “Global Health” for medical students after their 3th  or 4^th year.

Most students on this over-subscribed course carried out original field research overseas or in the UK, answering questions in the host settings and helping to inform the development of better health ...

I am Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality and a specialist in interdisciplinary sexuality and gender studies, critical theory, and the history of diagnostic and cultural concepts. My enduring research interest is in questions of exceptionality, difficulty, and (ab)normality as they are represented and understood in cultural, medical, and political fields. My most recent work has been on ...

Professor Elsdon-Baker is a transdisciplinary researcher whose work is predominantly sociological, historical, philosophical and psychological in approach. Her research interests are:

• The perception of, and trust in, Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) in diverse societies and across cultures
• Public space and cultural narratives surrounding STEMM
• Nati ...

Dr Evans is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages. Elliot is the author of Queer Permeability: The Body in French Thought from Wittig to Preciado(2020). Their research is concerned with the varied constructions of sexuality and gender across cultures; with the biopolitical formation of these identities, and the ways in which they are elaborated through writing and visual ...

Dr Sarah-Jane Fenton is a Lecturer in Mental Health Policy based in the Health Services Management Centre and the Institute for Mental Health (IMH).

The Health Services Management Centre (HSMC) at the University of Birmingham is one of the UK's foremost centres for research, evaluation, teaching and professional development for health and social care organisations. The Institute for Mental ...

My teaching focusses on the social and cultural aspects of eighteenth-century Britain. I'm particularly interested in how men and women experienced their lives in the context of wider understandings of power, gender and the body. 

I’m a senior lecturer in contemporary literature and digital cultures and co-director of the Centre for Digital Cultures in the department of English Literature.

I’m CO-I on the AHRC-funded Ambient Literature project and acted as a UK representative for the COST-funded European EREAD (evolution of reading in the age of digitisation) research network.

My research interests focus ...

Dr Heggie is a historian of modern science and medicine, with a particular interest in the history of nineteenth and twentieth century biomedical and life sciences. She also dabbles in the philosophy of science.

She has published books on the history of exploration and physiology, and on sports medicine, and many articles and chapters on a range of topics from Victorian nursing and public health ...

Dr Sabena Jameel is a Clinical Academic. She has three main portfolio roles working for the various Medical School programmes. These roles involve teaching, leadership and management, with a golden thread of professionalism running through them all. Dr Jameel is also clinical active, working in the General Practice setting.

My research and teaching areas span twentieth- and twenty-first-century writing, with a particular focus on the history and theory of the novel. Most recently, I’ve been working on the politics and poetics of affect in contemporary fiction and life-writing, combining my interests in the history of emotions, disability studies, and narrative medicine.

Dina Kiwan is a Professor in Comparative Education, having joined the department in January 2017. She is College of Social Sciences (CoSS) Deputy Director for Research and Knowledge Transfer, and has held other leadership roles as Head of Department of Education and Social Justice, and Director of Internationalisation for the School of Education. Her interests centre around sociological and ...

Professor Peter Kraftl is best known for his research on children’s geographies, focusing on children and young people’s experiences of and interactions with environmental processes – such as sustainable urban design, environmental resources and pollution. He also publishes on geographies of education and architecture. He is currently national co-lead for the Children, Young ...

Dr Irina Kuznetsova's research expertise includes areas of migration, forced displacement, health, and critical urbanism. Her recent projects focus on social consequences of population displacement in Ukraine, Russia, Rwanda, Nigeria and Japan, including mental health and well-being, and the impact of migration on rural communities.

Anna Lavis is an Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology in the Institute of Applied Health Research, and the Institute for Mental Health. 

In a range of collaborations across academic, policy and clinical interfaces, her work has two core focuses:

1. Anna leads a programme of research into social media and health, with a particular focus on mental health. She directs the Social Media ...

Jeannette Littlemore is a Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the role played by metaphor and metonymy in the understanding and expression of emotional experiences. She also explores the role played by metaphor and metonymy in language learning and cross-cultural communication. 

Her ...

Karen joined HSMC as a Senior Lecturer in Healthcare Policy and Management in November 2013. Originally qualifying as a clinical psychologist, Karen has over thirty years’ experience in the health and social care sector, including direct service provision and commissioning. For the past fifteen years Karen has been involved in research, consultancy and system development for a broad range ...

Social, cultural and military history of the two World Wars, including a focus on drug culture, consumption and control.

Jessica Pykett is a social and political geographer with research interests in governance, knowledge practices, policy innovation and political subjectivities.  Her research has focused on affective and emotional techniques of governance, and the influence of neuroscience and behavioural science on public policy and economic theory. Current work is on the intersections of neuroscience and ...

Dr Reniers is a research psychologist investigating the interplay between neurobiological, clinical and behavioural aspects of adolescent development and youth mental health. Her research involves the transition from health to disease, with a particular interest in emerging mental health problems (psychosis), neuroimaging (MRI and fMRI), social cognition (empathy, psychosocial functioning), ...

I joined the Shakespeare Institute in 2013, having been lecturing at Cambridge University for 7 years. I began my career as a professional actor, training at LAMDA and working quite extensively in theatre. Since deciding to move into academia my main research interests have been in the field of Shakespeare in performance, in particular verse speaking, adaptation and theatre history.  I ...

I work on modern literature and culture. My main areas of interest are modernism, the literature of the First World War, life writing, literary impressionism, and futurology.

• Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life, 2 vols (Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Self-Impression: Life-Writing, Autobiografiction and the Forms of Modern Literature (Oxford University Press, 2010)
• Imagined Futures: Writing, Science ...

Leonard Smith is a social historian with a special interest in the history of psychiatry and mental health institutions from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. His research has focussed primarily on England and the former British West Indian colonies. It encompasses the development of both private madhouses and public lunatic asylums, those who established and managed them, and the ...

Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge’s work focuses on twentieth-century and contemporary literature, political theory, and history, Human Rights, and Refugee Studies, drawing on the interdisciplinary connections between literature, history, politics, law, and social policy.

Stonebridge’s early work was concerned with the effects of modern violence on the mind in the twentieth and ...

I am a cultural historian and literary scholar interested in the nature of emotional experience and its relation to art - in particular Shakespeare’s. My research splits into two distinct but nonetheless related strands: the cultural history of the emotions, especially sadness, and the performance of Shakespeare today.

I am a Reader in Philosophy working primarily in the philosophy of mind and psychology.

Since joining the department in 2017, my work has focussed on the interface between philosophy and cognitive science. I have worked especially on consciousness, perception, and attention. I’m especially interested in how these faculties interact with each other in the mind. My work in these areas is collected in my papers (below).

I am currently interested in the relations between ...

I am a medically qualified neuroscientist who, for the last few years, has become interested in exploring the educational and intellectual ways of bringing sciences and humanities together. This has been achieved through contributing to the development of a number of programs and courses in Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences and Medical Humanities, both in the UK and abroad (Hungary and Romania).

Rachel is Professor of Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health at the University of Birmingham, and Consultant Psychiatrist in the Birmingham Early Intervention Services. Her research Interest is within the field of major mental illness; particularly schizophrenia and co-morbid depression in early phases of illness. Recent projects have developed the investigation of inflammatory models of psychosis ...

Sanne’s research explores how conflict affects gender relations. She is interested in understanding whether and how transitional justice mechanisms are capable of transforming gendered and other structural inequalities, engaging with the connections between conflict, development and social justice. She uses ethnographic, participatory and creative research methods to understand the lived ...

I am researcher in contemporary film, television and literature with a specialism in adaptations and mental health. I am also a poetry editor for a small press. My most recent book looks at character, the body, and adaptation was released in 2022. I am currently working on a book about male mental illness in contemporary culture.

I am a historian of the English reformation, with broad interests in the history and theology of late-medieval and early modern Europe. My research explores the religious and cultural history of England over the course of the long sixteenth century, with a particular focus on the impact of religious change on the lived experiences of ordinary people.

 

Rebecca is an Honorary Research Fellow for the four-year AHRC-funded project, ‘Forged by Fire: Burns Injuries and Identity in Britain, c.1800-2000’.

Rebecca is a historian of medicine and of Quakers. Her research and publications centre on the history of psychiatry, mental health, neurosurgery, neurodiversity, and First World War medicine and disability. She has worked with ...