What is Sub-Optimal Health?
Lijiaozi Cheng discusses the concept of sub-optimal health and the Chinese government’s colour-based “health code” for containing COVID-19 A label for me A few years ago, I was doing my masters in Edinburgh and
The Gendered Spectacle of Suffering
Lucy Weir explores the gendered nature of critical responses to on-stage violence I am an art historian by training, though my expertise lies in performance, from dance and theatre to live art. Throughout my
Prescribing Restraint: Patient Liberty and Movement in the Insane Asylum
Vesna Curlic explores the debates around patient liberty and restraint in asylum spaces In 1890, an anonymous patient at Crichton Royal Hospital in Dumfries, Scotland wrote a piece for the institutional magazine, The New
Speaking into Silence: Adolescent Illness Narrative
Amy Ryder discusses the lack of age-appropriate books and spaces for ill teens, and the flourishing of adolescent-authored illness narratives online During my time working for Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal, the Bristol Children’s
ILLNESS: A Narrative in Four Parts (Part Four)
Gillian Shirreffs uses poetry, prose and white space to explore lived experience of a chronic neurological illness. This is part four of an essay published in four parts this week. Click here for part
ILLNESS: A Narrative in Four Parts (Part Three)
Gillian Shirreffs uses poetry, prose and white space to explore lived experience of a chronic neurological illness. This is part three of an essay published in four parts this week. Click here for part
ILLNESS: A Narrative in Four Parts (Part Two)
Gillian Shirreffs uses poetry, prose and white space to explore lived experience of a chronic neurological illness. This is part two of an essay published in four parts this week. Click here for part
ILLNESS: A Narrative in Four Parts (Part One)
Gillian Shirreffs uses poetry, prose and white space to explore lived experience of a chronic neurological illness. This is part one of an essay published in four parts this week. Click here for part
Why Didn’t We See the Coronavirus Pandemic Coming?
A question of scale: Bettina Bildhauer argues that viruses are too small to be recognised in our anthropocentric habits of perceiving agency, but “new materialist” theories and pre-Enlightenment writing can help us challenge these
The [Dis]appearance of Hysteria
Performance artist Professor Laura González on paying attention to the hysteric utterance Hysteria is a condition that has been diagnosed since before Hippocrates’ time. In Ancient Egypt, a papyrus recorded an illness in which