Friday 7 November 2025, 2pm - 4.15pm
Seminar Room 56, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
All welcome.
Global health is often defined in terms of equitable approach to health worldwide. But what does equity even mean? Equity is an ethical and political principle subject to interpretation, disagreement, and feasibility constraints. By itself, it might not even require thinking ‘globally’, unless it is integrated with other concepts that are becoming central in global health ethics, such as solidarity. One question when thinking about health in terms of the global is what dimensions of health should be prioritized, for instance when thinking of the different cultural perceptions of some diseases or the stigma associated to mental health in some contexts. These issues are not only conceptual, but have important practical implications, for example for implementing or regulating technological interventions and better understanding their limitations and their perception in different contexts. These are questions about values, histories, and cultures that require a humanities approach to be formulated in the first place, and possibly answered eventually. This workshop wants to promote the integration of humanities-based reflection in global health, as part of a broader project on a “Humanities Framework for Global Health”, supported by a John Fell Fund TORCH International Fellowship and by the Uehiro Oxford Institute.
2 pm: Welcome and Introduction
Chair: Alberto Giubilini
2.05 pm: Panel 1: Equity: conceptual aspects
Caesar Atuire (Philosophy): Equity and Solidarity
Tolulope Osayomi (Medical Geography): Equity in Global Health: Why Geography Matters
2.45 Discussion
3pm: Coffee break
3.15 pm: Panel 2: Equity in Practice
Chair: Erica Charters
Sloan Mahone (History): Global Mental Health and the Lived Experiences of Stigmatized Conditions
Ann Kelly (Anthropology): Vector Control, Brickworks and Global Health at the Interstices.
4-4.15pm Discussion and Conclusion
Medical Humanities Research Hub, TORCH Research Hubs
