Creative-critical Approaches to the Health Humanities Workshop
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Room A.1.09, OpenLab.Brussels
Organised by Hannah Van Hove (CLIC, VUB - FNRS, ULB) and Emilia Nielsen (York University), this day-long workshop aims to attend to various developments, provocations and questions that have arisen in the Health Humanities in recent years, especially where creative-critical approaches are concerned. Consisting of round-table discussions, presentations of research highlights and work-in-progress feedback sessions, the day culminates with an online panel on the topic of publishing creative-critical work in the Health Humanities. Please see the programme below. The book of abstracts can be accessed below this paragraph. If you’d like to attend the online publishing panel, please email Hannah Van Hove (havhove@vub.be).
8.30-9.30 Opening Roundtable, moderated by Emilia Nielsen
All event participants are invited to participate in offering questions and/or responses to the general theme of recent developments, provocations and questions that have arisen in the health humanities and especially where creative-critical approaches are concerned.
9.30-10.00 Coffee Break
10-11.00 Research Highlights
Dr. Mariske Broeckmeyer (LUCA School of Arts), “Nonperforming Migraine: The Failing Voice as Artistic Practice.”
Prof. Wendy Morris (LUCA School of arts and KU Leuven), “Wombs, Ears, Scolds and Scribes. Writing as a plurality of parts and beings.”
11-12.00 Workshop Panel 1
Prof. Sarah de Mul (Open Universiteit), “At What Cost Success? Postcritique, Academic Vulnerability, and Natasha Brown’s Assembly” (co-written with Prof. Aagje Swinnen)
&
Prof. Emilia Nielsen (York University) with Dr. Hannah Van Hove (VUB - FNRS, ULB), “Creative Critical Approaches to the Health Humanities: An Attempt at Editorializing”
12-13.00 Lunch
13-15.00 Workshop Panel 2
Tess Casher (University of Alberta), “Thinking in the Hyphens: How Dysfluency-Informed Oral Autobiography Fosters Situated Storytelling”
&
Femke Van Hout (Tilburg University), “Shaping pain, shaping narrative: An empirical-philosophical study of narrative practices among young people with chronic pain”
Dr. Ruth Alison Clemens (Leiden University & CLIC, VUB), “Poeting the Clinical Archive”
&
Prof. Hanna Meretoja (University of Turku), “Counter-Narrating Cancer: Creative-Critical Entanglements”
15-15.30 Coffee Break
15:30-17.00 Online Panel: Publishing Creative-critical Work in the Health Humanities, moderated by Hannah Van Hove
Dr. Sabina Dosani, Editor-in-Chief, Medical Humanities & Honorary Researcher in Medical Humanities, University of East Anglia
Dr. Colleen Derkatch, Series Editor, Hopkins Health Humanities Series, Johns Hopkins University Press & Professor of Rhetoric at Toronto Metropolitan University
Dr. Monica Kidd, Associate Editor of Humanities Encounters, Canadian Medical Association Journal & University of Calgary and Memorial University
Prof. Sharrona Pearl, Series Editor, Hopkins Health Humanities Series, Johns Hopkins University Press & Andrews Endowed Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies at Texas Christian University
This workshop is made possible because of financial support from York University, Toronto, Canada through the Global Research Excellence Fund and the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. It is also made possible because of space and support provided by Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Université Libre de Bruxelles.
This workshop continues conversations started at the 2025 symposium on the same topic, held at Perdu in Amsterdam and organised by Hannah Van Hove, Andries Hiskes, Sarah De Mul, Mia You and Nadia de Vries as part of the research network ‘Creative-critical Approaches to the Health Humanities’, funded by the Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies (OSL).
