The project ‘Health Humanities: Global, Community, and Public Health’ supports and promotes medical humanities research expertise at the University of Oxford. Building on the successful establishment of TORCH’s Medical Humanities Network, this project expands the reach and significance of humanities scholarship relating to health, by building capacity for inter- and intra-divisional research, in terms of both impact and innovation. Through a programme of research and outreach focused on the themes of global health, public health, and community health, this project bolsters rigorous humanities scholarship through analysis of the relationship between health and society, with collaborations and public engagement at local, national, and international levels. Such an approach will help move beyond a focus on medical crises to long-term, multi-disciplinary, and integrated approaches to health, at the local, national, and global level.
This project offers interdisciplinary analysis of health and medicine along three key themes: global health, public health, and community health. Although each is a key medical field, each also captures the reliance on – and significance of – social context for health and medicine: the global, the public, and the community. What is the relationship between the public and individuals, and to what extent are they in conflict? How do different communities rank health compared with other values? Where are the global and the community located when it comes to health? Indeed, as the field of global health demonstrates, such concepts have less to do with precise geographical or demographic boundaries, and more with social and cultural contexts of health determinants. Global health, public health, and community medicine require the insights of humanities scholarship to be fully understood, properly implemented, and rendered adaptive to social and cultural dynamics that change over time and place.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a reminder that medicine and scientific research are only one component of the human ambition to provide comprehensive, equitable, and lasting health to individuals and populations. While experts have long understood this within their own fields of research, Covid-19 has revealed these interleaved dynamics to specialists and officials alike. It has crystallized broader understandings of co-morbidities, the social tensions inherent in public health, the vulnerabilities of global health infrastructure, and the politics and economics of international and community health. This pandemic is a reminder that health and disease are not solely biological; they must be understood in the context of their long-term social and cultural settings, including demographics, social structures, culture, economics, and behaviour.
This project was generously supported by the John Fell OUP Research Fund, alongside the expertise and infrastructure of TORCH. It ran from 2023 to 2025, during which time it hosted over 75 collaborative and interdisciplinary events, as well as facilitating a number of related projects, including Oxfordshire Health Humanities; The Public’s Health (with the BFI); Biotechnologies and the Humanities; VIVID network on Design, Visual Communication, and Public Health; and a national network for Humanities Teaching in Medical Schools. It enabled TORCH’s Medical Humanities to build links with key University departments and groups, including: Anthropology, Antithesis (Wellcome Ethics and Humanities), the Ashmolean, Bodleian Libraries, the Botanic Garden, Ethox, DPIR, Global and Area Studies, Global Health, the Pandemics Science Institute, Primary Health Care, Law, and the Uehiro Institute. In 2023-24, the project hosted AfOx Visiting Scholar Dr Tolulope Osayomi, working with him on events that showcased African medical research, culture, politics, and agency in understanding the global patterns of Covid-19. Blogs and videos showcasing the nature and variety of medical humanities research and are available on TORCH’s Medical Humanities website. The successful work of the Health Humanities project was recognized through the 2025 Vice-Chancellor’s Award to Medical Humanities for Research Culture, highlighting its interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to health and medicine.
