Queer methods of presence, proximity, and pressure
Susie Russell examines her experience of embodiment, relationality, and interdependence at the 2025 PhD School: Queer Methodologies in Medical Humanities.
About this collection
The contributions in this collection are from attendees at the 2025 International PhD School on Queer Methodologies in Medical Humanities, which took place in Durham in March 2025.
The PhD school was funded by Wellcome, as part of the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities at Durham University, and the Centre for Medical Humanities and Bioethics (CMHB) at Linköping University.
It was facilitated by Fiona Johnstone (Durham) and David Woodhead (Centre for Mental Health), with guest tutors including João Florêncio and Edyta Just (Linköping), Sage Brice (Durham), Nikolaos Papadogiannis (Stirling), Carla Tsampiras (UCT), Landa Mabenge (UCT), Benjamin Dalton (Lancaster) and Chase Ledin (Edinburgh).
You and me, I and I: the queerness of intergenerational storytelling
Becky Higgins reflects on her position as an autoethnographic researcher working collaboratively on the topics of memory and illness, exploring the queerness of storytelling as method.
Beyond Words: Creating Queer Knowledge Through Arts-Based Methods
Sanjana Kumar uses her experience of the 2025 Queer Methodologies in Medical Humanities PhD School as a lens through which to re-examine her own research practices as a psychodrama therapist and arts-based researcher in Kerala, India.
Abolitionist Futures for the Queer Medical Humanities
Lola Dickinson interrogates her role as a historian within the medical humanities, questioning the functions of power, positionality, and perspective in her work.
(Mis)Fitting Together: Reflecting on the Queer Methodologies PhD School
Filipa Teixeira considers the notion of (mis)fitting within higher education and reflects on what is needed to craft spaces where diverse groups of researchers can “fit together well” while creating productive and lasting connections.
This Page Bleeds Too: Zines, Infertility, and the Queer Art of Refusal
Shruti Ghosh explores zine making as a method for “queering” knowledge production in health research.
Becoming with Queer Methodologies
Atholl Kleinhans reflects on how the Queer Medical Humanities PhD School helped him to find an “epistemological home” that embraced both his research and his multifaceted identity.
Crafting Zines and Clinics: Fieldnotes on Queer Healthcare in India
Sharanraj Krishnan discusses how his engagement with the Queer Medical Humanities PhD School prompted him to ‘re-enter’ the ‘field’ and reexamine the positionality of the “I” within his research.
The Queer Pleasures and Pains of Autotheory
Harriet Mossop examines pleasure and pain as potential entryways into queer auto-theory in this reflection on ‘Locating the “I”: autoethnography as queer methodology’, a workshop led by João Florêncio and Edyta Just at the Queer Medical Humanities PhD School.
Charles Thrale: Disability and Gender Anxiety in WWII
Eden Rea-Hedrick brings artist and prisoner of war Charles Thrale into the realm of queer medical humanities by asking what his wartime work can reveal about midcentury concerns around gender and disability.
If you enjoyed the articles in this collection, you might also be interested in the contributions from the 2024 International PhD Summer School that was held in Vadstena, Sweden.