CHARM

The CHARM-network consists of a selection of global partners working in the internationally thriving domain of medical and health humanities (MHH). In our post-Covid-times, the new field continues to gain in importance, serving worldwide as the interdisciplinary home of scholars in medicine and nursing, sociologists and psychologists of (mental) health, specialists in health communication, philosophers and historians of medicine and health, bioethicists, literary scholars, and those working in performance and film studies. Given its focus on questions of individual and public health, the field offers numerous opportunities of collaboration with non-academic social and cultural institutions and policymakers. The interdisciplinary consortium brings together specialists working on health-related topics. As a whole, the group has a specific focus on two interrelated topics that are central to the field of MHH: the use of artistic objects and practices as therapeutic adjuvants on the one hand and the applicability of socio-historical, philosophical and intercultural knowledge in the development and improvement of medical and other policies and practices of care on the other. The activities of the network are targeted towards the co-development of expertise in the topical subdomains, but also towards the deepening of the conceptual and methodological potential of the wider field of MHH. The aim of the network, like that of the field, is to challenge and complement the biomedical assessment of illness and health with the analysis of their social, historical, cultural and psychological determinants, in an attempt to promote more holistic and fully humane forms of care.