The Theatre and Performance Research Cluster and the Identities, Politics and the Arts Research Cluster in the School of Arts warmly invite you to conference entitled ‘Comedy and Mental Health: Future Directions’ to be held at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus on Wednesday 1 May 2019.

The conference has been organised by Dr Dieter Declercq, Assistant Lecturer in Film and Media in the School of Arts.

At this event, eight speakers from a variety of academic and professional backgrounds will deliver short presentations on what they consider the most pressing questions and challenges for future research on mental health and comedy, especially stand-up comedy. The event is designed to stimulate further research into comedy and mental health by identify new research topics, exchanging methodological strategies and explore interdisciplinary and collaborative research.

Sessions will include ‘Comedy, Humour and Mental Health. An Attempted Overview and Some New Directions’; ‘Taking of the Mask and Laughing: Autistic Humour, Passing and Mental Health’; ‘Women Stand-Ups, Self-Denigrating Comedy and Mental Wellbeing’ and ‘Has the Growth of Stand-Up Comedy Contributed to Greater Awareness of Mental Health Issues?’

For the full programme, please see the page here.

The conference is free to attend and is open to all. Registration is open until Monday 29 April 2019; to register please email Dieter at dd324@kent.ac.uk.