Exploring a Mental Health Humanities Network for ECRs (Hybrid)

The British Academy Early Career Researcher Network brings together ECRs across the humanities and social sciences disciplines, regardless of their funding source or background.

Call for expressions of interest

Exploring a Mental Health Humanitities Network for ECRs 

A Hybrid One-Day Workshop, with Follow-Up Launch Showcase

May 18 and June 30 2023, University of Birmingham and Zoom

The British Academy ECR Network will host a workshop on the 18^th May 2023 designed to help establish an ECR Network in Mental Health Humanities. The day will allow for ECRs to present their areas of research, collaborate with others, hear from keynote speakers (Matthew Broome, Head of Mental Health Humanities Network at Birmingham, and Lucienne Spencer, involved with the Phenomenological Psychopathology project funded by the Wellcome Trust), and take part in a roundtable exploring the potential aims of the network. The idea is to construct a set of guidelines for the network going forward. The second event, on 30 June 2023, will act as the launch for the network.

The Medical Humanities has developed rapidly since initial explorations in the late twentieth century. As it grew, it was problematized, with some scholars preferring to identify as residing in the Health Humanities. More recently, there have been calls for a critical medical humanities, which instead focuses on the potential of what such scholarship might do. Traditionally an area of greater contestation and resistance to medicalisation, mental health has not always been well-served by being bundled together with the physical within healthcare systems, and therefore potentially within the disciplines that study them. In 2020, a Medical Health Humanities (MHH) research cluster was established, led by the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Mental Health, and embedding historians, philosophers, anthropologists, and literature, sexuality and gender researchers. 

This one-day workshop and follow-up meeting are designed to ask questions around two key areas:

• What is gained by ECRs considering the Mental Health Humanities? What does Mental Health Humanities mean to ECRs?
• How might a dedicated Network serve ECRs? How could a Network shape the field?

We are looking for active participants to join us to explore these questions. Through collaborative thinking and discussions, we aim together to produce a working document that might inform the development of Mental Health Humanities and with it a Network for ECR scholars. 

The workshop will be a hybrid event, with up to 20 in-person places available. The follow-up meeting is currently envisaged as an in-person networking event, which will launch the working document and garner wider involvement.

You must be: part of the British Academy ECR Network in the Midlands Region, wish to join and become part of this Mental Health Humanities Network; identify as an ECR working in the Mental Health Humanities; and want actively to participate in discussions.

Schedule

• 09:30-11:00: Presenting your research: ECRs outline their area of interest (2 min pitches of research) - this will enable us to return to these projects and ideas, and consider how we can intersect and develop further with a varied approach.
• 11:00 – 11:30: Coffee break
• 11:30-12:30: Keynote speakers: Matthew Broome and Lucienne Spencer – as a senior academic who set up the Mental Health Humanities Network, he will be able to shine a light on the value of networks for research projects, opportunities, and furthering the field – and talk about how this network can forge a connection with the wider MHH and beyond. Lucienne is currently working with Matthew on a Renewing Phenomenological Psychopathology project which has had a successful launch and is funded by the Wellcome Trust. Her experience in setting up and creating networks and research projects will be invaluable.
• 12:30-13:30pm: Lunch
• 13:30- 14:00: Discussion: What does Mental Health Humanities mean to you? 
• 14:00-15.30: Activity session: what does a useful ECR network look like? Groups will discuss and present ideas about ideas for a useful ECR network, complete with events, outputs and opportunities 
• 15:30-15:45: Coffee Break
• 15:45- 17:00: Workshop/round table: Explore the aims, working practices and activities of the network 

The second event will be a launch on 30 June, 2023, following these conversations. By this point, we will have compiled and written a working set of practices and aims for the network, and the launch will be the start of these events. It will be open to a wider network than the c.20 people who attended the workshop in-person, allowing for the aims/ideas of the group to be disseminated further. This will also allow for ECRs to network with those involved, and make valuable connections for further research, as well as raising the profile of the network itself. 

The Network can cover travel and accommodation expenses for ECRs and Partners to attend the event. Please email ecr_network@thebritishacademy.ac.uk for more details on how to get this covered.

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