Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities

Accipe pileum, insigne libertatis!

What a week we have had! As a previous post revealed, professor Rita Charon from Columbia University was appointed Honorary Doctor at the Faculty of Medicine this year: May we present: A very special honoris causa – Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities (lu.se)

When we started preparing for her visit to Lund, we focused on the conferment ceremony, the highlight of the academic year in Lund, filled with traditions dating back to the 17^th century and symbols dating back to… well, ancient Greece. The whole ceremony (approx. 4 hours long) is held in Latin, in the beautiful, newly renovated, 900-year-old (this year!) cathedral in Lund.

But Rita said: “Put me to work” so – eh – we did. Her programme ended up containing:

talk for MultiHelix ThinkTank;
lecture in a huge auditorium Understanding the sensitivities of body and mind: Open lecture with the 2023 honorary doctors of the Faculty of Medicine | Faculty of Medicine, Lund University;
lunch with faculty leadership;
meeting with Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities boards members;
meeting with Future Faculty;
rehearsal for the ceremony;
dinner with faculty leadership and distinguished guests;

and then – the actual conferment ceremony today, which will be followed by the dinner for about 900 guests this evening.

“What an amazing phenomenon this is”, Rita wrote me yesterday. It is, even for those of us who have experienced conferment ceremony (close up) many times before.

Thanks to Anders Palm, strategically placed in the Dome, we have a lovely picture of Professor Rita Charon walking across the Parnassus, led by the promotor, with hat, diploma and ring!

Vale praeclarissima medicine doctrix Lundensis!

May 26, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Events Rita Charon

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Existential resilience

For several years, Lund University has allocated funds for thematic collaboration initiatives. Researchers within the University apply for these funds, but to qualify for them, you need to provide authentic collaboration with parties from the surrounding society. There is always fierce competition for the thematic collaboration initiative funds. One wonders why… It’s not much money for each initiative and a lot of time and effort goes into the application – not to mention the actual work afterwards.

Is it the idea behind the whole thing? Probably. Broad interdisciplinary collaboration within academia (at least three faculties must be represented) in collaboration with actors with a clear purpose of making a difference in the world – I mean, who wouldn’t want to work with this?!

The Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities plays a part in one of the most recently granted collaborative initiatives: Existential resilience: Contemplation, aesthetics, compassion (ERiCi). Martin Garwicz, Professor of Integrative Neurophysiology and centre director for BRCMH, is one of three project coordinators. The other two coordinators are Christine Wamsler, Professor of Sustainability Science at the Centre for Sustainability Studies, LUCSUS and Max Liljefors, Professor of Art History and Visual Studies.

The initiative explores the role of contemplation, aesthetics and compassion to counter stress, fragmentation and loss of meaning that underlie today’s societal crises. It involves supporting existential resilience through integrated approaches that link art and health, nature and health, inner change, relationship-building and sustainability across individual, collective and global levels.

The collaborative initiative connects to research being done at the Faculties of Social Sciences, Medicine, Fine and Performing Arts, and the Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology at Lund University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The researchers collaborate with relevant professionals within healthcare, sustainability, schools and higher education institutions.

More about the collaborative initiative in the following article: The inner journey towards a sustainable future | Lund University

May 15, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Projects

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Throwback May

The research group (i e Advanced Study Group) working with Empathy and Compassion, which you read about in the previous blogpost, took an active part in than three major events during 2022. The first was a one-day (completely “sold-out”) conference with international guest-speakers on the theme: The Neuroscience of Empathy and Compassion. It took place on May the 4^th 2022 at Grand Hotel in Lund and was co-sponsored by Grace S. Sandblom’s Endowment and the Segerfalk Foundation.

Programme sheet for the conference The Neuroscience of Empathy and Compassion, pdf 1MB (Opens in new window)

The Segerfalk foundation organises the Neuroscience Day every year, traditionally held in May at the Medical Faculty in Lund. Martin Garwicz – a neuroscientist himself and part of the organising committee for the Neuroscience Day for years – saw an opportunity to add leverage and value and invited

Tania Singer, Social Neuroscience Lab, Max Planck Society, Berlin;
Christian Keysers, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam;
Ewelina Knapska, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw;
Ruth Feldman, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzlia;
Andreas Olsson, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm and
Olga Klimecki-Lenz, Eleonore-Trefftz Guest Professor, TU Dresden.

The conference The Neuroscience of Empathy and Compassion was an eye-opener for many of the about 100 participants, regardless of which faculty they came from. The Advanced Study Group regarded this conference not as the “Grand Finale” it was supposed to be (timewise), but rather some sort of starting event for continued research and collaboration.

The two following interdisciplinary workshops: “How the other person’s ethnicity affects your expression of empathy and compassion in healthcare and professional education”, and “Practices influencing empathy and compassion – contemplation, art, music, dance” are ample examples of continued – and developed research ideas and collaborations.

The Pufendorf Institute’s calendar on the workshop How the other person’s ethnicity affects your expression of empathy and compassion (In Swedish)

The Pufendorf Institute’s calendar on the workshop Practices influencing empathy and compassion

In May 2023, we follow up with yet another related event, where neuroscientist and professor Anil Seth discusses the mysteries of human consciousness. Again sponsored by Grace S. Sandblom’s Endowment and the Segerfalk Foundation. And yes, you guessed it, this event is sold-out too.

Beast machines, Dreamachines, and the mystery of consciousness | Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities (lu.se)

Read the excellent interview with Anil Seth mentioning ABBA, bad weather and Carl Linnaeus (“The Big Guy”) in one breath here . I particularly took this line to heart:

“Understanding how life works does not drain life of its beauty, it has added to it. Even though we do not fully understand what is going on with consciousness yet, the partial understanding that we do have encourages us to take consciousness less for granted.”

May 1, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Events

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Empathy and Compassion – a research theme

The Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities creates conditions for conducting, coordinating, and inspiring interdisciplinary research in the medical humanities. Our focus is on the good interpersonal relationship between patient and health care professionals.

The concepts of empathy and compassion are central by virtue of their importance to both the patient and the one(s) caring for him/her. By studying how empathy and compassion can be strengthened and how the impact of negative factors can be reduced, we intend to systematically build a clear national and international research profile.

During 2021 and 2022, we’ve pursued the research theme within a so called Advanced Study Group at the Pufendorf Institute at Lund University:

“Enhancing empathy and compassion in healthcare students and professionals”.

Relationships between individuals are the fabric of human civilization. The quality of relationships depends on empathy and compassion. These abilities are also crucial to professions and institutions that are foundational to modern society. In healthcare, compassionate care improves clinical outcomes for individual patients. Importantly, it also increases well-being of healthcare professionals and reduces their risk of burnout.

Compassion for the “other” is, in addition, a guarantor of equal healthcare for all. It would therefore be highly beneficial to individuals, professionals and society in general if empathy and compassion could be efficiently, reliably and meaningfully enhanced by training.

This is currently not the case. In fact, the complexity of empathy and compassion makes these concepts elusive even theoretically, and definitions and operationalisations across and within many studies are inconsistent. Our aim is to explore the conceptual and practical challenges associated with developing efficient, evidence-based tools to enhance empathy and compassion.

April 27, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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About BRCMH Research

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Alumni – the untapped well of wisdom?

Since 2008, medical humanities has been included as an elective course at the medical programme at Lund University and as course elements and seminars in semesters 4, 6, 8 and 9. In my previous work-life, I remember how difficult it was to get the students to fill in course evaluations and when they did, they were often short, to the point and with focus on what could be done better next time (which is no bad thing).

With the course evaluations from the medical programme I met the opposite. Long text, filled with nothing but praise for the course leaders and what medical humanities meant for these students, most on the brink of becoming physicians. They seem to think that the elective course in medical humanities (the last course of the entire 5-year programme) is something of a “book of revelations”, and reminding them of why they wanted to be physicians in the first place.

We could just sit back and enjoy this, of course. Why alter something that clearly works well and has done over many years? Well. Imagine the research material these course evaluations make. Together with the lists of master thesis-subjects. And that feeling the students expressed in those evaluations – the feeling of deeper understanding both on themselves and their patients. Does it last over the years? Should we add/change something in the course to better correlate to the common-day-work-life the now physicians experience?

A big alumni-project started in autumn of 2022 – because we want to find the answers to the above questions (and more). Who to better tell us than our former students? As we speak, a questionnaire is hitting the e-mail-in-boxes, snail-mail-boxes and LinkedIn-messenger-boxes of hundreds of former medical students. Several of our staff are engaged in this project, which we hope also will include an alumni-meeting the autumn of 2023.

If you want to know more about our alumni-project, reach out to Christopher.Mathieu@soc.lu.se

April 23, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Alumni

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And the award for best director goes to….

In November 2022 we at Birgit Rausing Centre för Medical Humanities saw an announcement:

“Do you know an inspiring leader and/or a good role model within the Medical faculty?”

We: Yes… we certainly do!

The question came from Future Faculty. Future Faculty is an organisation of researchers with a doctoral degree (PhD), who have not yet obtained a permanent/tenured position. The aim of Future Faculty is to improve the conditions for young researchers at the Faculty of Medicine and to promote development of a career system at all levels. And they award academic leaders within the Medical faculty with the Minerva Award.

So what did we do? We nominated Martin. Martin Garwicz, our very own centre director. Of course we did, he embodies all the criteria for the award: he is a good role model, who leads by example and raises the bar for academic integrity. He also stands (up) for academic values Honesty, Trust, Fairness, Respect, Responsibility, and Courage.

After a long and thorough nomination and vetting process including an external review committee, we are now finally in a position to reveal the happy news: Martin Garwicz is rewarded the Minerva Leadership Award!

Future Faculty’s Minerva award selection committee’s motivation for the choice is:

“Martin Garwicz is a remarkable and widely admired individual who excels as a leader, teacher, mentor, and colleague. He is appreciated for the openness and positive atmosphere he creates there, and the way he inspired others to do their best. His genuine commitment to fairness was reflected in treating diverse groups as equals and in making sure everyone at the table gets a say. Martin has successfully established a culture of openness and trans-faculty collaboration between researchers, earning the respect and trust of those around him. His embodiment of the core values promoted by the Minerva Leadership Award – honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage – is truly remarkable.”

For us, this is like the Oscars, only better!

March 22, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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About BRCMH Our Team

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Medical humanities in the medical programme

The Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities has several ongoing educational assignments and is developing new courses at Lund University.

Since 2008, medical humanities has been included as an elective course at the medical programme at Lund University and as course elements and seminars in semesters 4, 6, 8 and 9. Medical students also have the opportunity to write essays and degree projects in medical humanities in semesters 5 and 10. The medical programme (and our educational initiatives) is given in Swedish and information about both the course and the programme is sadly only available in Swedish. The same goes for the overwhelming course evaluations our brilliant teachers have gotten over the years.

One of them – the pioneer – professor Anders Palm, you met before, here and we’ve also written about his fundamental value for Birgit Rausing Centre here.

The other one is our current co-centre-director, associate professor, Katarina Bernhardsson. She is the one planning the courses, administrating and counselling, leading course elements and introducing (guest) lecturers and supervisors. Let’s just say she’s basically in charge of everything. And the students love her for this and her never failing commitment to them and to her subject.

We often ask her to “do her thing” – rooted in what is called narratives in medicine – with other teachers at the Medical Faculty, with representatives outside academia (within healthcare mostly) and with interdisciplinary research groups, locally and nationally. The impact is immediate and almost tangible. If you ever wonder what medical humanities can do for you (and others), have Katarina come over and wonder no more.

And now we want to do research on past achievements. Katarina Bernhardsson, Anders Palm, Chistopher Mathieu, Lars Hagander and Alexander Tejera are all involved in a major alumni-project, hitting the in-boxes, mailboxes and LinkedIn-messenger-boxes of hundreds of former medical students as we speak.

March 14, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Our Team

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Education, Collaboration and Research

Academic staff at Lund University, and indeed at all Swedish universities, divide their time between three major assignments: Tasks within education, within research and collaboration with organisations outside academia. Collaboration also includes outreach to society, as for example various popular science activities.

The staff at Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities are no exception. They all started working at and with the Centre in late January 2022, little over a year ago. The researchers who work for us form the core of the Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities. Their respective backgrounds, academic or clinical, vary, and while they’re temporary and part-time employees at the Centre, they remain firmly anchored in their respective disciplines and departments. You can meet them all here.

With our plan of operations as reliable handrail, our staff have been delivering one activity after another – accompanied by additional suggestions on how to reach the overarching objectives.

What better way to describe what it is Birgit Centre for Medical Humanities is up to than to convey the projects our staff is currently working on?

When looking at the list of projects, it occurs to me how most of them intertwine education, research and collaboration. As well as showing off that true interdisciplinary approach we hold so very high at the Centre. This makes it difficult to put them into a certain order, so I won’t even try to put labels on anything – I’m going to let the projects and the ideas speak for themselves. Some of them will get more than one blogpost. This doesn’t necessarily make them more important than others, it’s just an attempt to go easy on our readers.

March 3, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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About BRCMH Our Team

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Events

Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities is often hosts and/or co-hosts of various events. Some are academic conferences, others are open lectures or popular science-gatherings, some are interdisciplinary workshops… we compiled last years’ events here (partly in Swedish) and were amazed ourselves by the variety of entries! And 2023 is seemingly going to be yet another exciting year.

It’s no secret within the centre-management, that I absolutely detest organising events. It takes time, energy and the nitty-gritty-details can drive me mad. But when I stand there, together with my wonderful team, and see the venues fill up with curious people – well, it’s SO worth it.

This spring, we are going to organise a National network meeting, bringing together researchers from all over Sweden approaching the Medical Humanities together. We’re also inviting international speakers to Lund, adding international perspectives to our endeavours.

But to my utter delight and relief, not all events require my reluctant cooperation. Far from it. Our popular science events “Kunskapskrogen” (“Science pub”) always attract large audiences thanks to my colleagues at the Medical Faculty. And this years’ Bridging the Baltic: Medicine in the Baltic Sea Region symposium in Lund “Digital Health – interdisciplinary perspectives on trends and attitudes in the Baltic Sea region” is entirely run by other colleagues – within and outside the centre.

On our brand new website, you can see all events, from now on and onwards, and we truly hope you are able to come and join us!

February 9, 2023

Åsa Thormählen

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Events

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Modus operandi

How do you build a new interdisciplinary knowledge centre at a large, reputable university? Apart from the necessary foundations described here and here? How do you go from vision to action?

Our centre director, professor Martin Garwicz, was appointed almost two years ago and he gave an interview back then. That interview is still very much readable in its entirety. As is, indeed, our plan of operations, finalised in autumn 2021.

The slightly shorter version (also Martin’s):

The interdisciplinary approach to issues of science, education and societal engagement at Birgit Rausing Centre for Medical Humanities is reflected both in our long-term recruitment strategy and everyday operation.

Our philosophy and modus operandi, are to strive towards re-creating the university, in its etymological essence, as a collection of masters and students. In our interdisciplinary team of colleagues, each is a master of their own discipline, but also a student of a dozen of others.

We cannot carry out research, education and engage in societal outreach at the level stipulated by our statutes without enthusiastic contributions from others. Instead, we try to inspire, stimulate, facilitate, initiate and coordinate in dialogue, collaborations and co-creation with others – individuals as well as groups and organizations.

In this way, we want to be an interdisciplinary forum for anyone interested in scientific, educational or societal issues related to healthcare or healthcare professions.