The Humanities Forum: Gender and Health

Upcoming Activities:

December 10-12, 2012. Conference: Relational Selves and Families in Medicine.

For information about the conference, please click on the conference link to the left. Most welcome!

About the Gender and Health Research Network

The Humanities Forum: Gender and Health is a network for researchers primarily with backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences, but also in medical and nursing sciences, who are engaged in research in the area of gender and health. Its aim is to produce and encourage interdisciplinary encounters and work in the field of gender and health and to strengthen research cooperation among scholars in this area. Researchers in the network engage in analyses of gender theoretical concepts, of lived experiences of health, well-being, illness and pain, as well as of encounters between health care professionals, patients and new medical technology - with a gender perspective. Researchers in the network also examine the interplay between cultural beliefs and ideas about the body, sex and gender, individuals' and groups' ways of talking about their own bodies and lives in relation to these cultural beliefs and norms, and the development and use of new medical therapy and surgery. They examine women's and men's experiences of family-making including reproductive technologies, as well as cultural beliefs and norms about motherhood and fatherhood. These are but some examples. The network was funded in January 2010 and financial support is given from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2010-2012). Its steering-committee consists of Dr Kristin Zeiler, Dr Anette Wickström and Ph.D-cand. Lisa Guntram.

Network members 

The network consists of around 60 scholars from various disciplinary and interdisciplinary backgrounds, mainly from Sweden, but also from the UK, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and France. Members of the network belong, as some examples, to universities in Sweden such as Linköping University, Göteborg University, Malmö University, Stockholm University, Södertörn University, Karolinska Institutet, Uppsala University, Umeå University and to Lancaster University, UK, London School of Economics, UK, Maastricht University, the Netherlands, Göttingen University, Germany and Paris, France. 

Previous Activities 

The network has organised the conference Gender and Health: Potentials in the Field (25-27 Sept 2010) and Feminist Phenomenology and Medicine (18-21 May 2011, together with the Body/Embodiment Group, Uppsala University). The latter event will result in an edited volume. The network has also organsied three one-dag-seminars in 2010 ("Sexing the Body", "Expressing and Modifying the Body" and "Children and the Making of Families") and two in 2011 ("Aging, Dementia and Gender" and "Cultural Diversity in Medicine"). One more one-day symposium has taken place March 14, 2012 (on the theme of "Suffering and Healing") and another one, May 21, 2012 (on "Bodily Modifications in Medicine). We thank the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Linköping University, Sweden, for financial support for both of the conferences. We also thank Vetenskapsrådet for financial support via the GenNa Program and Uppsala University for financial support for the latter conference, and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for financing of all network activities.

For information about network activities, please contact kristin.zeiler@liu.se