3 new funded projects by the Wellcome Trust ISSF Scheme

The Newcastle Medical Humanities Network is delighted to announce the funding of 3 projects by the Wellcome Trust ISSF – Medical Arts, Humanities And Social Sciences Bid Preparation Scheme:

Ruth Raynor (School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape) and Jessi Komes (School of Psychology): ‘Beyond the Waves: Living Geographies of Grief, Bereavement, and Remembrance during Covid-19’ seeks to pioneer interdisciplinary research practice between psychology, human geography and performance, developing novel methods that examine living geographies of grief, bereavement, and remembrance. This means understanding how grief is felt in the body in relation to spaces and places, drawing on the body as a methodological tool, and bringing together research techniques and conceptual frameworks informed by the three disciplines. We will consider the potential for a public performance, or a ‘living map’ that makes visible and political, otherwise hidden and/or unspoken experiences of loss, disseminating our research to broader publics. 

Franziska Hartung (School of Psychology), Angela Kennedy (NHS Psychotherapist), Jennifer Richards (School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics), James Harriman-Smith (School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics) and Jennifer Arnold (School of Modern Languages): Engaging with stories can help individuals and communities to process pain and traumatic experiences, build resilience and connections, and bibliotherapy has become popular as a promising low-cost and non-invasive intervention that can improve wellbeing, e.g., in cancer patients. Reading, either as shared reading in groups, or individually, especially in conjunction with group discussions about the reading contents can help individuals to process distressing thoughts and feelings indirectly in a safe fictional space without direct confrontation of personal traumatic events. Here, we want to test the effectiveness of 3 types of bibliotherapy (trauma-relevant vs trauma-irrelevant reading) and creative writing as group-based wellbeing interventions for NHS staff.

Caroline Allen (School of Psychology, Behavioural Sciences and Psychology Research Theme) and Oliver Shannon (School of Biomedical, Nutritional, and Sports Sciences): This project will examine how food insecurity (FI) - defined as having limited or unreliable access to nutritious food - influences experiences of hunger and stress throughout the day. This will be done via experiential sampling, in a real-world context, thus supporting the development of appropriate methodological and analytical approaches and assessment of their feasibility. It will generate testable hypotheses about the effects of FI-related hunger and stress on health behaviour, which will be used to develop a funding application to: a) Identify biopsychosocial factors of FI that lead to increased health disparities, and b) Develop effective interventions to reduce health disparities of people exposed to FI. 

Last modified: Fri, 07 Oct 2022 16:16:07 BST