Visiting Scholars
Center for Health HumanitiesA fellowship program to further research and scholarship that engages the MCPHS Community with humanities thought leaders from around the world.
Bringing Global Scholars to MCPHS
The Center for Health Humanities invites scholars from around the world to spend time in-residence at our Boston campus. Visiting Scholars may use University resources to begin or further their research projects. They also hold public talks to present their research and conduct office hours to connect with members of the MCPHS Community.
Apply to be a Visiting Scholar
Joel Anderson
| PhD"For my two-week stay, the Visiting Scholars program at MCPHS provided an ideal research environment. The staff went out of their way to make me and my wife feel welcome during the stay. And I was especially impressed by the quality and productivity (and friendliness) of the researchers at Center for Health Humanities. The discussions I had with the colleagues and students there were consistently thought-provoking and inspiring."
Sharrona Pearl, PhD
| Associate Professor of Medical Ethics and History, Drexel University“This fellowship was a true gift, offering space and time to work in the context of warm and supportive colleagues. I was really grateful for the unique opportunity to take a break from the regular demands of life to devote to my work, surrounded by the beauty of Boston and the rich culture of the MCPHS.”
Chinmay Murali, PhD
| Assistant Professor of English, Sanatana Dharma College, India“The excellent hospitality of the MCPHS Community coupled with easy access to health humanities-related resources in and around Longwood medical area made my stay truly memorable. The Visiting Scholar fellowship brought me in touch with some of the finest scholars in the field. I was also fortunate to have long interactions with faculty at MCPHS that were academically illuminating and culturally enriching. I would recommend this fellowship to anyone passionate about research in the health humanities and its allied disciplines.”
“I had a delightful experience as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Health Humanities. I really benefitted from the rich intellectual atmosphere at the Center and both the faculty and staff were welcoming and made me feel at home. I highly recommend it.”
Joseph Gabriel, PhD | Associate Professor of History, Florida State University
2024-2025 Visiting Scholars
Senior Lecturer of English, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
The study aims to account for the motivations and tensions generated in the quest for wellness as protagonists or narrators in stories that move between science (orthodox medicine) and spirituality or religion, two fields that thrive on contradicting assumptions.
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Cape Town, South Africa
On the nature of harm; specifically, whether death is a harm to the being who dies, and if so, how great a harm it is.
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Umeå University, Sweden
On the moral responsibility of people with mental illnesses. Specifically, why does it hurt to be told, as a person with mental illnesses, that one is not responsible for one's actions?
Dema G. Seelye Chair in the History of Medicine, Purdue University
“Slamming the 'Doors of Perception:' The Rise and Fall of Psychedelic Medicine” offers a comparative analysis of psychedelic research in the U.S. and Europe during the second half of the twentieth century, drawing on archival and institutional sources to track the transatlantic exchange of scientific ideas and psychiatric treatments.
Associate Professor of Translation and Interpretation, University of Cordoba, Spain
“OncoTRAD:” a graphic medicine translation project involving faculty, students, hospital doctors and patients to empower oncology patients by developing infographics to share vital scientific and medical information with patients.
Neurology Resident Physician, Duke University School of Medicine
A work of non-fiction (a mixed genre of memoir and academic research) that is focused on illuminating how chronic toxic stress from childhood trauma and structural disadvantages compromise brain health, primarily through examples from her own upbringing as well as patient encounters in her clinical practice.
Assistant Professor of Health Humanities and Bioethics, Joint Appointment in Art and Art History, University of Rochester
Warhol's “Before and After” paintings point to the importance of the perfect nose in understandings of postwar American consumer capitalism, the history of art, the rise of plastic surgery, and the pathologization and typification of race.
Professor of Writing, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland
A qualitative study into the role of narrators in reading and writing prompts for the use of reflective writing in medical education.
2023-2024 Visiting Scholars
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
"Autonomy Gaps and the Ethics of Data-Driven Mental Health Diagnostics"
Department of Health and Society, University of Toronto
“Crafting Legacy: Arts-Based Explorations of Older People’s Stories of Migration as Participatory Action Research”
Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine
"Autism, Neurodiversity and Adulthood: New Ethical, Legal and Social Challenges"
Elster and Parsi's 2022 book, Transitioning to Adulthood with Autism: Ethical, Legal and Social Issues, examines a number of salient issues related to autistic adolescents transitioning to adulthood. In their next co-edited volume, they plan to examine a number of new issues facing autistic adults, such as housing, self-care, advocacy, spirituality, oral health, and masking.
Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine, Department of History, Florida State University
“Intellectual Property Rights and the Pharmaceutical Industry in the United States in the Years between World War I and World War II”
University Lecturer, Scholar and Researcher, University of Tübingen, Germany
Doctoral candidate and Physician (cand. med.) in clinical training at University Hospital Tübingen, Germany
“Psychotherapies as placebos”
Department of Art History, University of Buffalo
“The Surgical, Cosmetic, and Racialized Gazes in Andy Warhol’s Before and After (1961-1962)”
Department of History, Mississippi State University
“A Calculus of Compassion: Emotion, Medicine, and Identity in Nineteenth Century America”
2022-2023 Visiting Scholars
Independent Scholar
“Invisible Made Visible: Comics and Mental Illness”
This edited collection explores comics related to mental health. Dr. Gross uncovers a paradox about how invisible mental and emotional struggles are represented in a visual medium. The collection includes works on the impact of comics on the stigmas surrounding mental illness, the history of mental illness, and innovative depictions of mental illness.
Post Graduate Department of English and Research Centre, Sanatana Dharma College, India
“Gyno-graphics and the Visual Rhetoric of Comics”
Dr. Murali’s book “Infertility Comics and Graphic Medicine” analyzes narratives about reproductive issues and examines the ways authors use visual clues in comics to share their highly personal experiences. He categorizes such comics as “gynographics,” which is a term he helped coin, a major sub-genre of graphic medicine.
College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University
“The Mask: How We Navigate Race, Health, and Safety by Concealing and Revealing our Identities”
Dr. Pearl explores the history of masking to show its use over time as a means of protection and division. The work spams from the anti-mask laws of the nineteenth century through the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the tensions between exposure and concealment.
Kilachand Honors College, Boston University
“Constructing Moral Babies: Medical and Scientific Enterprises of Infancy in America, 1850s-1920”
This work explores the philosophical and social constructions of the infant in American medical and scientific discourses from the 1850s to the 1920s. Dr. Yang’s work uncovers the debates within medical and scientific communities concerning the moral aspects of infants, particularly how their agency can be understood and directed.