Rethinking Methodologies: A Workshop in the Medical Humanities

In June 2025, the Oxford Medical Humanities Research Hub supported the student-run event Rethinking Methodologies: A Workshop in the Medical Humanities.

The workshop aimed to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to discuss shared interests in the methodological challenges emerging within the Medical Humanities. We intended to debate questions concerning how to develop and enhance interdisciplinarity in methodologies used across the field of the Medical Humanities: How do we understand health and illness through different disciplinary lenses? Whose stories get told, and how? What methodologies do we use to explore these questions, and what do they make visible or, indeed, obscure?

The first speaker, Dr Sloan Mahone, introduced their work promoting oral life histories as a methodological approach to understanding the lived experiences of epilepsy. Dr Mahone spoke about conducting oral history research in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, and Zimbabwe. It was particularly interesting to hear the interviewees’ response to participating in the research, as Dr Mahone spoke of their emotional response to sharing their stories, being listened to, and having some measure of control over the direction of the interview. Oral history emerged as a rich and exciting methodology with the capacity to empower participants and uncover insights (particularly surrounding internalised self-stigma) that might be difficult to access through other instances of qualitative research, such as surveys.

Next, we heard from Dr Paola Esposito, whose research into butoh, an avant-garde Japanese dance, emphasised an embodied approach to inquiry. She began with a historical overview of butoh as a dance form, tracing its afterlives from late 1950s post-war Japan to contemporary film and political movements. In doing so, she illustrated the potential of bodily movement and performance to intersect with long-standing political activism and acts of resistance. Then, Dr Esposito shared her personal experience of using butoh to manage her long-term chronic pain arising from Covid-19, gesturing towards the ways that the body’s internal experience may offer alternative means of treatment beyond the biomedical understanding of the body.

Our final speaker, Dr Marta Arnaldi, introduced her project Translating Illness, which sits at the intersection of literature, clinical research, and the theory and application of translation through translation studies. She asked us to consider how translation shapes our understanding of illness across languages and cultural contexts, emphasising that translation is not always neutral, but can reproduce and reinforce hierarchies of power. Nevertheless, translation also offers exciting possibilities to enrich research in the Medical Humanities. Dr Arnaldi encouraged recognition of the responsibility of humanities researchers to imagine new frameworks and methodologies to beneficially engage with clinical research.

Together, the three talks presented distinct potential entry points into the Medical Humanities through the lens of lived experience. First, oral history as a research methodology demonstrated a broader shift in qualitative research. The experience of stigma and the lived realities of illness often remain invisible in more conventional data collection methods. Second, the analysis of butoh illustrated how performance and movement can act as both therapeutic practices and forms of resistance to data-driven models of medicine. Through an autobiographical embodied reflection on butoh dance, we explored an example of how the internal visualisation of pain can contribute to rethinking scientific inquiry. Third, these discussions highlighted the central role of language. There is always an act of translation involved, whether as verbal communication in interviews, the gestural language of the body, or ‘Knowledge Translation’ in medical practice. In this expanded sense, translation becomes a powerful means of interrogating hierarchies as well as exploring new modes of belonging.

The Q&A session that followed was as richly thought-provoking as the presentations, providing a wide-ranging discussion that cut across disciplines and methodologies. Questions ranged from exploring the therapeutic potential of butoh not just as a performance art but a practice of care, to the ethics and politics of translation, questioning whether translation may be susceptible to hierarchies of social power. Discussions also encouraged reflection on the role of the body as a social construct and a research term in its own right. Participants reflected on the affective dimensions of community formation through interviews, dance, and poetry, as well as the importance of narrative theory and languages used by patients and clinicians in medical settings.

One particularly exciting area that emerged was the question of how to communicate the opportunities in the Medical Humanities to medical students and clinical practice. In other words, how can we demonstrate the value of storytelling, dance, and translation to those working in clinics? How might these methodological approaches help future research into medicine to assist doctors and healthcare providers? In thinking about health and illness through the lenses of oral history, the autobiography of the body, and translation studies, we explored different ways stories get told, many of which remain obscure in a clinical setting. The value of these methods lies in their potential to reveal alternative aspects of illness and health: whether through the lived experience of stigma, the affective communities that explore embodiment, or the ethics and politics of translation in medical practice.

The workshop gave us plenty to think about, with a variety of wide-ranging, collaborative, and exciting discussions. We left feeling invigorated by the range of perspectives and diversities of ideas we had encountered. In exploring the varied and diverse methodologies we use within the Medical Humanities, we were reminded of the richness of the field and the importance of continuing to reflect upon how we can enhance future research into this area.

This workshop opened up future discussions, reaffirming our belief in the value of coming together across different disciplines and methodologies to understand new possibilities within the exciting field of Medical Humanities research.

Orestis Tzirtzilakis, DPhil candidate, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages. Orestis investigates the performance of modern Greek identity through the cultural and medical histories of hysteria.

Madhurima Sen, DPhil candidate, Faculty of English. Madhurima studies literary representation of trauma experienced by war survivors.

Charlotte Wilson, DPhil candidate, Faculty of English. Charlotte explores representations of caregiving in nineteenth-century literature.

Find out more about the Medical Humanities Research Hub.