An expertise center
Metrodora is the Health Humanities expertise center at the University of Antwerp. The center focuses on education, research, and services, and has a broad international network in both academia and the healthcare and cultural sectors.
Health Humanities: an interdisciplinary approach to health
The field of Health Humanities reflects on contemporary issues related to mental and physical health from multiple disciplines. It is an interdisciplinary field grounded in a structural exchange of knowledge, insights, and methodologies between, on the one hand, the (bio)medical sciences and, on the other, humanities disciplines such as ethics, communication, philosophy, literary studies, sociology, anthropology, history, and the arts. Medical and clinical perspectives are thus complemented on an equal footing by philosophical, historical, anthropological, sociological, narratological, and cultural perspectives.
From theory to practice: a focus on lived experience narratives and cultural expressions of health
From a research perspective, the focus lies on how developments and ideas about health, healthcare, and medicine are reflected in cultural expressions in society, on lived experience narratives, and on the knowledge production that emerges from them. The aim is to develop a theoretical understanding of themes such as health, illness, disability, patient experience, sustainable care, life, and death. At the same time, there is always a concrete link to practice.