"Participants in Chronic Illness Inclusion’s research... explained that disbelief from medical professionals ‘knocked [their] self-confidence’... [they] were left wondering if they were ‘making things up’. Ultimately many were left feeling ‘worthless’." thepolyphony.org/2025/12/22/e...

Back in August, I ran a poetry workshop for psychiatrists at St Nicholas Hospital in Newcastle. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my academic career, and I hope more will follow. A special thanks to the History of Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the @rcpsych.bsky.social!

In our next creative piece for the 'In Practice' project, Greg Hoghman explores disability, geography and mobility through his digital cartography titled Travels of a Disabled Person Who Does Not Drive in 'America's Finest City (2003-2025). thepolyphony.org/2025/12/18/c...

Anuj Kumar brings together ecological vulnerability, multispecies care, and relational health in his reading of Shaunak Sen’s film All That Breathes. thepolyphony.org/2025/12/17/b...

Pragna Dev discusses the Indian care system in this personal review, in dialogue with Miller's foundational text. thepolyphony.org/2025/12/16/e...

Mila Daskalova reflects on the importance of poetry to psychiatry, both in the nineteenth-century and the present day. thepolyphony.org/2025/12/15/p...

"When anti-stigma campaigns shift away from acting on the wider determinants of health [..] they tend to [..] reproduce inequalities." #RecalibratingStigma @oliwilliams.bsky.social @gmthomas.bsky.social @amychandler.bsky.social Tanisha Spratt @brisunipress.bsky.social

Enjoyed writing this piece on 'Stigma's changing face' with Fay Dennis. The stigma of addiction and the stigma of Long Covid have much in common.

Thanks @the-polyphony.bsky.social for sharing your platform with us to give people a sense of what's in the new edited collection 'Recalibrating Stigma: sociologies of health and illness' Available as a free e-book or relatively inexpensive paperback 5/5 bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/recalibratin...

Lastly Caroline Law and @harrietcooper.bsky.social pull together their respective analyses of male infertility and parenting disabled children to consider how stigma is involved in shaping and maintaining reproductive norms and idealised notions of family. 4/5 thepolyphony.org/2025/12/05/r...

Then @hannahfarrimond.bsky.social & Fay Dennis combine analyses from their respective chapters in the book to explore what the examples of Long COVID and drug addition can tell us about how stigma emerges, affects people, gets disrupted, and mutates. 3/5 thepolyphony.org/2025/12/04/s...

The 1st post of the takeover is from me, Gareth, Amy, & Tanisha. It summarises the key arguments and concepts we put forward in the chapter we wrote for the book. In it we explain why both stigma and anti-stigma need to be better conceptualised and applied. 2/5 thepolyphony.org/2025/12/03/a...

2 years ago @the-polyphony.bsky.social kindly invited me @gmthomas.bsky.social @amychandler.bsky.social & Tanisha to write about the book we were putting together on stigma (see ⬇️). Now it's out @brisunipress.bsky.social they've let us do a mini-takeover! 1/5 thepolyphony.org/2023/09/11/r...

Nicolas Barnett, Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams consider how issues of language and translation intersect with questions of power and identity in witness reports by healthcare professionals. thepolyphony.org/2025/12/08/m...

In the final of our 'Recalibrating Stigma' mini-takeover, Caroline Law and Harriet Cooper explores how stigma operates in relation to reproductive norms. thepolyphony.org/2025/12/05/r...

In the second of our 'Recalibrating Stigma' mini-takeover, Fay Dennis and Hannah Farrimond explore the contextually specific and contingent nature of stigma. thepolyphony.org/2025/12/04/s...

In the first of our 'Recalibrating Stigma' mini-takeover, Oli Williams, Gareth M. Thomas, Amy Chandler, and Tanisha Spratt introduce the concept of anti-stigma. thepolyphony.org/2025/12/03/a...

In our next piece of lived experience creative work from the 'In Practice' project, poet and researcher Grace Marsh shares three poems. thepolyphony.org/2025/12/02/t...

Órla Meadhbh Murray introduces the Gut Feelings course: a space for people to narrate, explore, and challenge their experience of gut symptoms. thepolyphony.org/2025/12/01/g...

Meenakshi Srihari offers a critical examination of how art addressing antimicrobial resistance draws on familiar war and superhero metaphors, and shapes how we imagine our entanglement with microbes. thepolyphony.org/2025/11/28/t...

In our latest Review, Neil Vickers discusses poet and academic Lucy Newlyn’s debut novel The Forum: thepolyphony.org/2025/11/27/b...

"Being in nature is about where your body is. Connecting is about how your attention behaves." Dr Yewande Okuleye, in our 'In Practice' series showcasing multi-modal creative engagement with the lived experience of chronic illness, disability and caregiving. thepolyphony.org/2025/11/26/f...

Arpan K Banerjee reviews Oliver Basciano’s Outcast: A History of Leprosy, Humanity, and the Modern World, exploring the modern history of leprosy through archives, literature, and personal narratives. thepolyphony.org/2025/11/25/b...

David Woodhead reflects on being gay and getting older. thepolyphony.org/2025/11/24/a...

Anand Padmasenan critically examines the relationship between colour deficiency, cinema, and disability through his documentary film The Color of Colours. thepolyphony.org/2025/11/21/s...

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. thepolyphony.org/2025/11/18/y...

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. thepolyphony.org/2025/11/17/b...

Drawing on her experience at the 2024 #MedHums International Summer School, Charlotte Lock reflects on the role of interdisciplinarity in her research on approaches to knowing, visualising and experiencing the heart. thepolyphony.org/2025/11/13/t...

Not long left to apply to be an editor at the Polyphony!

Not long left to apply to be an editor at the Polyphony!!

We are pleased to welcome a new member of the team: Xiao Ge has joined as Guest Editor for the Polyphony Meets China (PMC) project! Welcome Xiao! thepolyphony.org/2025/11/10/n...

Claire Jeantils and @sarawasson.bsky.social reflect on the experience of translating Wasson’s article “Before Narrative” into French, exploring the challenges and opportunities the process revealed for the field of medical humanities. thepolyphony.org/2025/11/05/t...

Michelle Sok I HE considers how Maite Alberdi's film The Eternal Memory challenges dominant cultural representations of dementia and terminal illness. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/30/w...

Xiaohong Liu introduces the concept and history of Chinese tea therapy, alongside its contemporary practice at Hunan Cancer Hospital in China: thepolyphony.org/2025/10/28/c...

Alina M. Jolly and Rayson K. Alex review I Have Not Seen Mandu, exploring its literary and epistemological disruptions of India’s mental health climate. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/27/f...

We're hiring 3 new editors! 2 general and 1 for reviews! thepolyphony.org/2025/10/27/w...

@cforsdick.bsky.social concludes the @readingbodies.bsky.social takeover and discusses how this project contributes to rethinking the medical humanities in ways that are simultaneously multilingual, transnational and translational. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/24/m...

In Part 4 of the @readingbodies.bsky.social takeover, @rocio.bsky.social discusses the colonial legacies of nineteenth-century medical metaphors and demonstrates their ongoing relevance for the present day. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/23/m...

In Part 3 of the @readingbodies.bsky.social takeover, Nicolás Fernández-Medina examines the Spanish avant-garde’s response to the biomedical sciences through the lens of Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s pioneering avant-gardism. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/22/b...

In Part 2 of the @readingbodies.bsky.social takeover, @oliviaglaze.bsky.social considers the policy and impact potential of research on languages, identity and culture within the medical humanities. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/21/l...

@katharinemurphy.bsky.social introduces the @readingbodies.bsky.social takeover and discusses what historical discourses of illness in European literatures and cultures contribute to the medical humanities. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/20/h...

"Rather than asking why specific communities are ‘hard to reach’, perhaps the real question is – have they simply been easier to ignore?" Rianna Raymond-Williams discusses 'Unboxing', a creative elicitation tool she developed for her doctoral study. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/17/e...

Saurabh Chowdhury writes from an anthropological perspective to discuss the entanglements between evolutionary biological variations and modern sociocultural prejudices. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/13/w...

Employing Alison Kafer's 'crip time' as a mode of writing, Ayeong unravels the recovery paradigm and its institutional salience. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/10/c...

This year, I've been lucky enough to work with @actionforme.bsky.social, as part of a collaboration between Action for ME and @durhamimh.bsky.social. (More on this soon!) For now, this reflective post explains my motivations - and what I believe a collaborative, cross-sector approach can achieve.

Katharine Cheston reflects on her own experience of ME and the need for a more caring, curious, and compassionate approach to health research. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/09/p...

@loladickinson.bsky.social interrogates her role as a historian within the medical humanities, questioning the functions of power, positionality, and perspective in her work. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/08/a...

Drawing on her fieldwork, Pragya Roy critically analysis the everyday embodied material realities of Dalit motherhood(s) through the nexus of caste, gender, and economic class. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/06/n...

Jack Rhys Hancock explores the well-loved novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Simon Stephen’s play adaptation, reflecting its ongoing influence on the representation of Autism. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/03/b...

Yann Phesans interrogates the concept of therapeutic neutrality, combining personal history and clinical experience to offer an alternative. thepolyphony.org/2025/10/02/n...