Shame and Medicine, Art History & Visual Culture - PhD (Wellcome Trust Funded)

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship in Art History and Visual Culture as part of the Wellcome-Trust funded Shame and Medicine Project.

This fully funded studentship, beginning in September 2021, will be based at the University of Exeter in the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health.

The Shame and Medicine Project is an interdisciplinary research project involving researchers from social sciences, philosophy, cultural studies, literary studies and medicine.

The project is based at the Universities of Exeter and Birmingham, with a core collaborator at Children’s Health, Ireland, Dublin. The aim of Shame and Medicine is to research the role of shame in various aspects of health and medicine, including clinical practice, patient experience and student education. The project is particularly concerned with investigating how race, ethnicity, class and gender impact on the experience of medical shame. Please visit the project website for more information: https://shameandmedicine.org

The PhD studentship will be part of the University of Exeter Team of the Shame and Medicine Project, working closely with the project’s Principal Investigator Professor Luna Dolezal.

The proposed PhD project will be based in the interdisciplinary programme of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter and co-supervised by Dr João Florêncio.

The prospective student will propose a research project which investigates cultural representations of shame and/or shaming in medicine through some aspect of contemporary visual culture. Projects might explore medical reality television, public health campaigns, social media, film and television or contemporary art.

The overall aim of this PhD research is to contribute to the cultural studies analyses of the Shame and Medicine project, helping to understand how medicine’s contemporary visual culture can both construct and reflect shame experiences and how this feeds into broader shame dynamics experienced by patients, medical students and healthcare professionals. There is a particular emphasis on considering intersectional aspects of experience for example in relation to race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, gender, disability, etc.

The student should have a background in cultural studies, visual culture or art history and be familiar with, or willing to engage with, feminist, queer, postcolonial, critical race and disability theoretical paradigms, among others.

The prospective candidate should submit a PhD proposal (1500-2500 words) which gives an accurate overview of their proposed area of research.
(Please visit Exeter’s Postgraduate Study Page for detailed instructions on how to put together a PhD Research Proposal).

The student will be based in the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, which has a thriving postgraduate community. Ample training and career development opportunities will be available through the Univeristy of Exeter and the Wellcome Trust.

The studentship is for 3 years full-time and will cover University tuition fees at UK/EU rates, with a stipend of £19,919 for year 1, £21,542 for year 2 and £23,298 for year 3, and a research allowance of £5,000 for the three years.

This studentship, including full tuition fees and maintenance allowance, is available to UK/EU candidates.

International students can apply and pay the difference in tuition fees.

Start date: September, 2021 (with the possibility of an earlier start after the interview date if desirable).

For more information about the project and informal enquiries, please contact the primary supervisor, Professor Luna Dolezal