Narrating Illness: Who Cares?

We warmly invite you to join our upcoming webinar “Narrating Illness: Who Cares?”, which brings together scholars from literary studies, cultural studies, and medical humanities to explore how illness is narrated, interpreted, and understood across different cultural and disciplinary contexts. The event will address questions of care, patient experience, and the role of storytelling in shaping our understanding of health, illness, and medicine.

Date: Tuesday, 17 March 2026
Time: 11:00–12:30 (Zurich) | 10:00–11:30 (Maynooth) | 10:00–11:30 (Accra)

Registration: https://uzh.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rciCtBBDReGEy8XcAe8emw#/registration

Speakers:

Martina King (Medical Humanities Research Group, University of Fribourg) – Specialist in modern German literature and medical history; former clinician.

Loïc Bourdeau (Critical Medical Humanities Research Cluster, Maynooth University) – Specialist in cultural studies, French studies, and patient narratives.

Victoria Osei-Bonsu (Department of English, University of Ghana) – Expert in anglophone literary and cultural studies and comparative approaches to health-related narratives.

Veronica Heney (Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University) – Specialist in sociology, literary studies, and narratives of madness and mental distress.

Chairs: Jordan McCullough (Assisted Lab, University of St Gallen), Tania Manríquez (Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Zurich)

Organisers: Forum for Medical Humanities (University of St. Gallen & University of Zurich), Forum for Global Health Ethics – an outreach initiative of the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine at the University of Zurich and a World Health Organization Collaborating Center.

With support from: Institute for Medical Humanities, Critical Medical Humanities Research Cluster.

We look forward to welcoming you to this interdisciplinary conversation. Please feel free to share this announcement within your networks.