Dr Dieter Declercq, Assistant Lecturer in Film and Media in the School of Arts, has secured funding from the British Society of Aesthetics to organise a conference which aims to stimulate interdisciplinary exchanges between analytic aesthetics and health/medical humanities. The conference, entitled ‘British Society of Aesthetics Conference: Art, Aesthetics and the Medical and Health Humanities’, will take place from Thursday 6 February to Saturday 8 February 2020, at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus.

The conference will be co-organised by Dieter, Dr Michael Newall, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art, and Professor Nicola Shaughnessy, Professor of Performance in the Department of Drama and Theatre. The conference will explore the contributions of art and aesthetics to medicine, medical education and health care in all its aspects.

The keynote talks will be delivered by Professor Rita Charon (Columbia University), Professor Paul Crawford (University of Nottingham), and Professor Sheila Lintott (Bucknell University), alongside confirmed papers from Dr Julie Anderson (University of Kent), Dr Stella Bolaki (University of Kent) and Dr Eileen John (University of Warwick).

Dieter says: ‘We are very excited and grateful to the BSA for funding the first conference designed to bring together philosophers of art and scholars in the health/medical humanities. We are very proud to have such an amazing line-up of world-leading scholars in both fields and we are certain that this event will foster many rewarding exchanges’.

More details, including a call for papers, will be distributed soon. In the meantime, contact Dieter for further information here.