About Us

Welcome to Medical Humanities Sheffield (MHS)

The interface between medicine and science on the one hand, and the arts and social sciences on the other hand, is one of the most exciting and important in modern academic life, offering unrivalled potential for multi-disciplinary work, policymaking, and public life.

It is this interface which concerns Medical Humanities Sheffield. The Centre brings together over 100 colleagues from the Faculties of Medicine, Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and Engineering. It also involves clinicians in the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, the Children’s Hospital, and Primary Care.

The distinction we make in Sheffield between ‘medical humanities’ as an interface between disciplines, as opposed to a discipline in its own right, is important. In Sheffield we regard medical humanities as a place where experts from disparate fields of knowledge can converge, collaborate, discuss, and enjoy new and productive synergies and syntheses.

As such, we do not seek to delimit and restrict our definition of ‘medical humanities’ according to particular methodologies and approaches. Rather we regard MHS as a capacious and collaborative vehicle for exploring all issues relating to the well-being of mind and body in societies past and present. Put simply, our fundamental mission is to locate, understand, and privilege what it is to be ‘human’.