Every prospective student who applies to the college must be proposing a research project that fits within one of the following four Interdisciplinary Themes:
Care as Craft
We are looking for expressions of interest concerned with cultural and community traditions of care practices in relation to human and more-than-human health. We welcome proposals which interrogate how histories of healthcare offer a perspective on the ideological hierarchies, systems and institutions that shape our conceptual and affective responses to care, and/or which engage closely with archives and collections (physical and/or digital), concepts, aesthetics, and methods that are central to crafting and curating healthcare care in the past. Curation is itself a form of care (see ‘Curating the Future’), implying both careful protection and selection (of artefacts, events, data, ideas, methodologies) pertaining to (health)care related histories, or ecosystems (biomedical, indigenous, traditional), or ethics, for example. We welcome projects that explore how we can curate, as well as communicate, (heath)care more carefully and effectively, as well as projects that, for example, foreground activism as a more agentic form of care relating to human or environmental health.
Proposals might explore practices of curation (e.g. historic and emergent forms of anthologisation, exhibitions, and taxonomy). Alternatively, proposals might consider how current discourses around fourth wave feminism, decolonisation, environmental humanities, or crip theory, change approaches to particular historical archives, databases, and collections. How do we educate about care of people, place or planet across different periods and contexts? How might students and educators of the history of health, including gallerists and archivists, redesign aspects of pedagogy to ensure inclusive practices of careful curation which respond to people with different needs and lived experiences, or to different political moments/movements?
Care as Craft Theme Lead: Dr Georgia Petridou (petridou@liverpool.ac.uk)
Ecologies of Care
This interdisciplinary theme invites proposals that use place-led approaches to explore the health-environment nexus, from impacts of ecosystem change on chronic/infectious disease to effects of arts/nature-led community groups on human and more-than-human health. We are looking for proposals that engage with the capacity of spaces and places (where space is given meaning through history, cultural memory and connections to cultural or personal identity) to foster human and planetary health. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches to shaping spaces and places for care, redressing social injustices and reducing health inequalities, working with communities and protecting the wellbeing of both people and planet.
Proposed projects may include, but are not limited to: how heritage landscapes and environments (canals, waterways, forests, parks and coastlines) and their associated histories, traditions and cultural practices foster attachment to place, cultural identity, connection and wellbeing; how arts, creative and cultural practices help people (particularly marginalised or under-represented groups) access health and wellbeing benefits of nature, heritage and other environments; how creative and cultural engagement fosters connection, participation and social inclusion, strengthening relationships between people and places, and contributing to healthier, more resilient communities and environments; how caring for trees, woodland, waterways, coastlines and other habitats can improve physical and mental health, strengthen communities and encourage environmental stewardship of planetary health; how heritage, culture and creativity can help communities respond to climate and ecological crises, by exploring the past impacts of heat, flooding and extreme weather, and imagining more sustainable and resilient environmental futures.
Ecologies of Care Theme Lead: Dr Rebecca Geary (R.Geary@liverpool.ac.uk)
Creativity and Care
This theme invites expressions of interest that engage with the capacity of arts and creative practices to catalyse, at individual and structural/systemic levels, new experience and innovative thinking in relation to health and wellbeing by: transcending traditional disciplinary boundaries; fostering community and meaningful relational connections; representing and redressing social injustices and health inequalities; giving voice and expression to the lived experience of marginalised or under-represented groups; capturing aspects of health and care experience which official reporting methods overlook or neglect. We welcome projects that explore how arts-based approaches can both interrogate and shape understandings of care practices, environments and experiences, as well as stimulate creative research methods and approaches which contribute to a more diverse, and more widely disseminated, knowledge base in respect of health and care.
Projects might include, but are not limited to, how arts-based initiatives or approaches can: create networks of care beyond social service models which sustain wellbeing across human and more than human worlds; empower marginalised groups to communicate health needs and access resources; constitute a form of activism by illuminating and intervening in care injustices; narrate (verbal and non-verbal) experiences of place for groups whose perception of the environment are rarely considered to help shape landscapes of care; prioritise artistic (affective/subjective) modes of attention to experiences, environments and practices of health and care as alternatives to objectifying or clinical procedures; privilege the complexities and diversities of personal experience over standardised medical or scientific accounting.
Creativity and Care Theme Lead: Dr Nicole Vitellone (njv@liverpool.ac.uk)
Curating the Future
This theme is interested in practices of “curating” (etymologically “taking-care-of”) the “future” in the broadest sense. We welcome proposals that respond to emergent social, environmental, and health challenges across different scales, from the local to the global. Projects might focus on the imagination of possible futures: how, for example, writers, artists, policymakers, or particular communities articulate adaptive strategies in relation to phenomena such as climate change, ecocide, AI, ageing populations, novel pathogens. What sorts of conflicts, ecologies, social phenomena, or care practices could manifest in these futures? What sort of technologies, political formations or narratives might catalyse change? We are also interested in histories of the future, in what might be learned from failed or alternate visions of futurity that have emerged at different points in time: whether they take the form of utopian dreams or apocalyptic visions.
Some “Curating the Future” projects might engage with the future of curation itself. We welcome proposals on how decolonial, ecocritical, crip, or queer theory, changes approaches to archives, data, or collections: particularly those associated with the institutions in the Crafting Care network such as University of Liverpool’s world-leading Science Fiction collection or National Museum Liverpool’s rich resources in natural history. How might neighbourhoods, online platforms, national parks, or city centres re-curate themselves for the challenges of climate change? How might museums and galleries draw out hidden histories of health and medicine to imagine more inclusive futures?
Permeating across this theme is a question of curating more just, pleasurable, equitable, and liveable futures in the face of shifting local and global challenges.
Curating the Future Theme Lead: Dr Sam Solnick (sns@liverpool.ac.uk)
AHRC 'Crafting Care for People, Place and Planet' Doctoral Focal College 