Friday, 12 April 2024, 16:00-17:30 CET, online, in English and German
Monika Pietrzak-Franger (Universität Wien) und Peter Mayr (Wien), Living with Long Covid. Interviews and Photographs

In this talk, Monika Pietrzak-Franger, full professor for British cultural and literary studies at the University of Vienna, will give us an insight into her recent project “Living with Long Covid”. As a sub-strand of the interuniverity research cluster Post-Covid-19 Care, this project asks what it means to live with Long Covid every day. It explores not only how patients deal with their symptoms, but also their struggle for recognition, the lack of effective therapies, the lack of interest in their problems, the limits of scientific knowledge and the lack of (state-funded) social support. Based on interviews and photographic material produced with and for Long Covid patients in Austria, it shows the disease – its individual, family and social effects – from the perspective of those affected. It translates the experience of those affected into a detailed account of how Long Covid changes lives and thus offers an impressive testimony to their struggle. The photos, taken by Peter Mayr, are records of what the patients wished larger public to know about their struggles. Together with the texts based on the interviews, they counterbalance the mainstream media reports on Long Covid, which are often – and with few exceptions – one-sided, frequently use generic images and perpetuate stigmatizing narratives and iconographies of illness. We hope that our participatory, co-creative approach will contribute to the diversification and visualization of patients’ experiences in the media.

Post-Covid 19 Care. Interuniversity Cluster Medical Humanities (University of Vienna) and Health Economics (Medical University of Vienna),
https://postcovidcare.univie.ac.at

Peter Mayr, https://www.petermayr.com

Tuesday, 28 May 2024, 18:00-19:30 CET, online, in German
Medical Humanities & Climate Change. Panel discussion with Tobias Dietrich (University Bremen/IMHAR), Prof. Dr. Céline Kaiser (University of applied sciences, Ottersberg /IMHAR) and Prof. Dr. Sophie Witt (University Hamburg)

What role do climate change phenomena play for the medical humanities? And what role can they play? Sophie Witt, literature and theatre scholar from the Liberal Arts programme at the University of Hamburg, Tobias Dietrich, film scholar at the University of Bremen, and Céline Kaiser from the University of applied sciences, Ottersberg, will discuss these and other questions in a roundtable. How can we address phenomena of planetary health? How does the health of individuals relate to social and planetary health? What significance do audiovisual media and artistic practices have in the construction of our ideas of the surrounding nature and of the reciprocity of ecology and (mental) health? And how do we research and communicate this new subject within the medical humanities? We are interested in the potential of the arts and – in the broadest sense – applied cultural sciences and humanities to (further) develop skills in the context of climate change and cultural transformation.

Forum Positionen:
https://www.hks-ottersberg.de/hochschule/forum-positionen.php

Thursday, 27 June 2024, 16:00-17:30 CET, online, in English
Fiona Johnstone (Durham University), Visual and Material Culture & Medical Humanities

As guest in our salon, Fiona Johnstone, Assistant Professor in Visual and Material Medical Humanities at Durham University, will give us insights into the work of the Visual and Material Lab that she currently leads as part of the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities at the University of Durham (2023-2030). The platform brings together humanities and social science researchers, people with lived experience and people working in different sectors to co-develop new and experimental approaches to tackling health challenges. The Lab takes up this strand and looks to new questions, innovative methods, and alternative perspectives on health that are generated when visual and material culture is taken as a starting point. Find below a link to the manifesto that Fiona wrote for a Visual Medical Humanities!

Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities, https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/discovery-research-platform-for-medical-humanities/

Visual and Material Lab,
https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/discovery-research-platform-for-medical-humanities/labs/visual-and-material/

Fiona Johnstone, Manifesto for a Visual Medical Humanities, https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2018/07/31/manifesto-for-a-visual-medical-humanities/