Work package 4 – Heritage and wellbeing
This WP aims to critically explore the interconnectedness of heritage and wellbeing and their significance as emergent and urgent, core agenda at the level of policy-making, professional training, public engagement, social impact and critical-academic research. The emphasis placed in the definition of health by the UN World Health Organisation on, not only the absence of disease, but the presence of physical, mental, and social wellbeing has led to raising awareness of the role of culture and heritage. Moreover the relationships between ‘heritage and wellbeing’ reveal intimate links between two realms: on the one hand, ‘past/tradition/memory’ as complex resources for constructing/re-constructing personhood, on the other hand, repertoires of resilience, cosmologies of care and emergent coping strategies. Both derive from attempts to define, control and sustain wellbeing in desired futures. The core to understanding these dynamics can be seen as the potential of cultural heritage to create more just futures.
This theme will complete research in the following areas:
1/To ensure a thorough grounding of diverse conceptual issues and theoretical perspectives regarding heritage and wellbeing that cross-over bio-medical, cultural-linguistic and psycho-social domains.
2/To pursue novel techniques and interventions that span the ‘Medical Humanities’ (i.e. ethnographic, clinical, visual-material culture, museological and interpretative).
3/Methods will be part of the broader cross and interdisciplinary perspectives.
4/Using comparative insights to throw critical light on the differences that emerge in research findings as well as exploring synergies.
5/Crucially the package will address public engagement needs and with diverse partner institutions with an emphasis upon disseminating findings, public learning and patient advocacy.
People involved in the theme Heritage & wellbeing
Supervisor
WP4 – Heritage and wellbeing
University College London
ESR11
WP 4 – Heritage and Wellbeing
University College London [UK]
ESR 12
WP4 – Heritage and Wellbeing
University of Gothenburg [SE]
Supervisor
WP4 – Heritage and wellbeing
Gothenburg University