Greifswald Medical Humanities Network

Medical Humanities is a transdisciplinary field of research and practice that is defined by its focus on topics relating to medicine, health, illness, care and death. The topics are not researched exclusively from a medical and scientific perspective (which is what the ‘medical’ stands for), but also - and primarily - from the perspective of the so-called ‘humanities’. This English term roughly covers the scientific disciplines that are considered humanities, social, cultural and behavioural sciences in the German academic system. There is currently no German term for ‘medical humanities’ that would adequately cover this spectrum of disciplines and thus the conceptual breadth of the approach.

There are a number of disciplines that traditionally deal with medical topics and examine them from a humanistic perspective. Medical ethics and the history of medicine are among the traditional disciplines in this field. From this perspective, Volker Roelcke (2017) argues in favour of a ‘culturally competent provision of medicine’ (title: Vom Menschen in der Medizin. Für eine kulturwissenschaftlich kompetente Heilkunde. Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag). This understanding largely corresponds to the understanding of medical humanities, but it is not entirely in line with it. On the one hand, it is not merely about expertise in cultural science (because this would exclude medical psychology, for example), on the other hand, it is not just about expanding medicine beyond its own borders, but - ideally - about the mutual exchange between the disciplines involved. Roelcke's plea would have to be expanded accordingly, which would lead to an unwieldy formulation such as provision of medicine that corresponds to aspects of the humanities and social, cultural and behavioural sciences, in close exchange with non-medical and non-scientific disciplines. The established English term Medical Humanities is much more catchy and factually accurate.

The difficulty in translating this term is due to the fact that this transdisciplinary approach to medical topics currently only exists very selectively in Germany and the systematic transdisciplinary approach is hardly represented in the German-speaking research landscape and medical practice. We use the English term in order to transfer this broad concept to the German-speaking research landscape, to localise and anchor it there. At the same time, we would like to continue the tradition of medical humanities that has existed in English-speaking countries since the 1970s.

Since our network is interested, for example, in the linguistic and communicative construction of knowledge, theoretical concepts and methodological approaches; and since such processes are among the subjects of our research, the difficulty of translating the concept of ‘Medical Humanities’ into German is also part of our process of reflection and self-discovery.