Health and Welfare Research Group 2010-11

Alternate Wednesdays in term, 12.00 - 14.00
CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Conveners

Erica Borgstrom (Institute of Public Health)
Christopher Bunn (Institute of Metabolic)
Neil Singh (School of Clinical Medicine) 
Julie Walsh (History and Philosophy of Science)
Rebecca Whyte (History) 

Advisors 

John Forrester (History and Philosophy of Science)
Simon Szreter (History)

About the group

The Health The Health and Welfare Group explores knowledge about health, disease and society from an interdisciplinary perspective. We approach this topic comparatively, focusing on the construction and conceptualisation of human and social well-being in diverse historical periods and geographical areas. In particular, the Group also considers the impact of these ideas on the contemporary practice of healthcare and the implementation of welfare policy.

The Group meets fortnightly during term time with discussions focusing on one theme per term.  For 2010-11, these themes are Health Behaviours, Therapy Culture and Therapy Criticism and Intervention.  Events take on a variety of formats, including reading-group discussions, workshop seminars, round-table discussions between researchers and practitioners, invited speaker events and whole-day symposia. We are interested in exploring a wide variety of conceptual and methodological approaches to the study of health and welfare. We welcome faculty staff, students, clinicians/practitioners and anyone else keen to discuss these ideas in an academic environment. 

Themes for 2010-2011: Health Behaviours, Therapy, & Intervention

 Today we can’t escape the fact that today many of our most severe health problems are caused, in part, by the wrong personal choices. Obesity, binge-drinking, smoking and drug addiction are putting millions of lives at risk and costing our health services billions a year. So getting to grips with them requires an altogether different approach to the one we’ve seen before. We need to promote more responsible behaviour and encourage people to make the right choices about what they eat, drink and do in their leisure time. (David Cameron, foreword, A Healthier Nation, Policy Green Paper No.12, Conservative Party 2010.)

If daily headlines and political speeches are anything to go by, behaviour is a major health concern of our times. But what is it? And why and how is medicine looking to the social sciences and humanities for models to explain and change them? The first term’s sessions aim to map and comment on the ways in which notions of behaviour have developed.

In the following two terms, under the rubric of Therapy and Intervention, we will consider historical and contemporary investments in health interventions and behavioural therapies and explore their pragmatic and ideological coordinates.  We will engage with the literature of therapy criticism and ask, for example, whether political modes of citizenship have been recast as modes of ‘patient-hood’, or whether it makes sense to regard ‘therapy’ as an opiate of the masses?

Michaelmas Term 2010: Health Behaviours
Lent Term 2011: Therapy Culture & Therapy Criticism
Easter Term 2011: Intervention

 
New members are always welcome!
Subscribe to the Health and Welfare email list for information about forthcoming events.

Administrative  contact: Esther Lamb (Grad/Fac Programme Manager)

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