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Medical Humanities Blog

On the Wellcome Trust & the Medical Humanities

Posted: 05 Jun 2011 11:18 AM PDT

Although this blog has a decidedly American-centric focus, I do try to keep track of goings-on in the medical humanities in both the larger Anglophone MH community and of course in non-Western contexts as well. Regarding the middle category, the Wellcome Trust recently announced a new class of funding entitled Investigator Awards in the Medical Humanities. From the press release:

The Investigator Awards scheme in Medical Humanities will cover two categories, Medical History and Humanities and Ethics and Society, enabling scholars to pursue individual, bold visions with greater flexibility. It will build on moves by the Wellcome Trust towards more expansive, longer term research in medical history and humanities.

It will see an expansion in scope of the current bioethics programme to include the social aspects of biomedical research and health interventions more broadly, as well as research evaluating the effectiveness of public engagement and health communication interventions.

Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, says: "The pace of progress of biomedical research makes it ever more important that we also examine its social, political and historical contexts. Our new Investigator Awards scheme in Medical Humanities will provide the flexibility and support to allow scholars to explore challenging questions and help us embed biomedical science in the cultural landscape."

Awards of up to £200 000 per year for up to seven years will be made to scholars in established academic posts depending on their career history, ambition and vision, and the resources required to realise this vision. The Awards will be made to researchers at two levels - New Investigators and Senior Investigators - depending on their experience. They will complement existing schemes, which support scholars in the medical humanities at all stages of their careers.

Information about the award, eligibility requirements, etc., can all be found on the official web pages.

MH Readers who are unaware of the Wellcome Trust and the incredible resources it offers to scholars working in the history of medicine and the medical humanities should hurry over and check out some of the abundant resources on the web regarding the Wellcome Trust, the Wellcome Collection, and of course the Wellcome Library. The impact of the Wellcome Trust in these areas simply cannot be overstated, and without question it represents some of the most important funding, collections, and resources for the history of medicine and the medical humanities in the world.