Previous events
Nordic Network Gender Body Health June 2021
Capturing Chronic Illness Panel Discussion 20 November 2021
As part of the Being Human Festival 2021, we hosted a panel discussion on how sexuality, gender, and race shape experiences and understandings of chronic illness and disability. The panel featured performance artists Claricia Parinussa and Laura Fisher, and humanities academics Dr. Churnjeet Mahn, Dr. Donna McCormack and was chaired by Dr. Ingrid Young. We discussed visual performance and arts, as well as on the possibilities for conveying and reimagining representations and experiences of illness and disability. It included personal reflections on illness and disability, a discussion of the role of art in health contexts, and critical approaches to the body, care and collectives.
The panel ran alongside ‘hologram 10.7’, a performance by Claricia Parinussa, Paradax Period and nymity. You can find out more about this digital performance here.
Panelists:
Claricia Parinussa and/or [nussatari] is an interdisciplinary artist with a body-based practice encapsulating movement, performance, research, writing, producing and community organising. See more about Claricia’s work here.
Laura Fisher (she/they) is a dance artist and producer based in Glasgow. Their practice is rooted in the expanded field of dance, but the form of their work is varied and multidisciplinary; spanning dance, sculpture, live art, film, club performance and design. See more about Laura’s work here.
Dr. Churnjeet Mahn is a Reader in English Literature at the University of Strathclyde. She is currently researching experiences of racism and homophobia in travel accounts.
Capturing Chronic Illness Panel Discussion 10 June 2021
As part of the Nordic Network Gender Body Health 2021 series of digital seminars, we hosted the second event as part of Capturing Chronic Illness. In this panel, we continued our discussions around illness, queer intimacies and the legacy of colonial depictions of bodies with artistic, activist and academic partners. The panel included:
Chisomo Kalinga is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, who works on and around illness narratives, HIV and sexual health in Malawi.
Claricia Parinussa is an artist who works in dance and performance and is associated with Tramway in Glasgow.
Chisomo Kalinga & Claricia Parinussa, along with Ingrid Young & Donna McCormack, explored how the visual and performance arts might open up possibilities of depicting and making apparent the lives of people living with chronic illness.
This digital discussion was held on Thursday, 10 June from 12:00-1:30 UK time.
A transcript of the event can be downloaded here.
Being Human Festival Discussion November 2020
On Friday, 20th November, medical humanities scholars Dr Donna McCormack (University of Surrey) and Dr Ingrid Young (University of Edinburgh) hosted an interactive discussion that explored the issues raised by the exhibition. This discussion was held online and explored a number of issues raised by the exhibition.
We were joined in discussion by Dr Chisomo Kalinga. Chisomo is a Wellcome-funded medical humanities postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh. Her current project examines literary traditions and health narratives in Malawi and its border countries. She is also collaborating with colleagues at the University of Malawi and Malawi University of Science and Technology to launch the first medical humanities network for Malawiana studies. Her research interests include disease (especially sexually transmitted infections), biomedicine, traditional healing, and witchcraft in African writing and narratives.
We were joined by Marc Thompson. Marc Thompson is founder and co-director of The Love Tank, PrEPster and BlackOutUK. Marc is an activist, mentor, film buff and lover all things Hip Hop. Marc has been involved in advocating for social justice for over 25 years with a focus on Black minority and ethnic communities, sexual health and HIV. He is particularly interested in the intersection of race, sexuality and HIV and the impact it has on individual and society.
The photos we discuss are:
26:45 Agy Worthington
31:23 John Ferguson
38:40 Belinda Otas
44:00 Paula Knight
51:10 Dresda Emma Mendez de la Brena
Capturing Chronic Illness 