The Gold Between the Cracks: Creative Health, Reproductive Loss and the Art of Repair

For Baby Loss Awareness Week 2026, Fiona Johnstone, Sofie Layton, Estelle Verdi, Mary Robson and Sumayya Mulla write about a growing programme of collaborative research using creative practice to challenge silence, deepen understanding and transform support around reproductive loss and maternal bereavement.

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Creeping Doubt: Living with a Chronic Illness 

Rena Alcalay explores the concept of 'bodily doubt' and how living with a chronic illness destabilises our assumptions about quantifiable data.

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Welcome to our new Editor in Chief, Jordan McCullough

We are delighted to announce that the new Editor in Chief of The Polyphony is Jordan McCullough.

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What is Contragestive Time? Pregnant Uncertainties in Fertility Control

The research team behind the Contragestive Time project explore how alternative forms of fertility control can reshape how we think about contraception and abortion.

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Recent Posts

Photograph of tea stained letters in a messy pile. All with 'open record' written on them in scribbled handwriting.

On Voice and the Medical Record

Camilla Lyckblad introduces us to her audio installation on medical records and record keeping. Read and listen...

If You Go Down to the Woods Today…

Kate Marks and Tracey Falcon's polyvocal creative text, with artwork and audio, explores spinal cord injury and movement within the human and non-human environment. 

Making Space Where None Exists: Creating a Self-Advocacy Zine for Trans+ Autistic Cervical Screening

In this second piece about their zine, Cervical screening for trans+ autistic people: A tool for self advocacy, researchers Georgia Rivers and Katie Munday reflect on the motives for and process of their collaboration.

Pencil sketch of Erich Fromm.

The “Having” and “Being” Modes of Depression

Joshua Clark explores the impact of grammatical and idiomatic differences between English and French on the conceptualisation, experience, and treatment of depression.

Pink and blue tie dye background with black text that reads "Cervical Screening for Trans+ Autistic People" and then in smaller text "A tool for self advocacy". below this is a rainbow infinity symbol. At the bottom of the image, the text reads "By Georgia Rivers and Katie Munday".

Beyond the Journal Article: Making Trans+ Autistic Health Research Accessible

In the first of two pieces about their zine, Cervical screening for trans+ autistic people: A tool for self advocacy, researchers Georgia Rivers and Katie Munday discuss the pressing need for accessible community resources and why they chose to create one for themselves.

Between the Lab and the Clinic: Perspectives from Medical Humanities and Science and Technology Studies (STS)

Kristin D. Hussey and Hannah Star Rogers draw on Science and Technology Studies (STS) to think through how the 'lab' is being employed across the medical humanities.

Close up photograph of pharmaceutical pills. Some in black and white caps, some round and white, and others white and orange.

Medicalisation and Medicalising Deviance

Liam Marshall reflects on the limits of contemporary medicalisation scholarship which can de-historicise enduring modes of power.

Fluid Boundaries of Cure and Care: Contested Meaning of Intravenous Treatment

M. Iqbal Syauqi Al Ghiffary explores Intravenous Treatment as a tangible cultural artefact that transforms abstract suffering into visible care.

The Body in Pain Across Languages: Translating Medical Records into Art

Elena Foulis and Julieta Manrique consider additional ways to understand people’s experiences with illness and pain beyond spoken languages, focusing on Manrique’s paintings of her experiences with fibromyalgia.