Call for Abstracts: Objectivity and Subjectivity in Medicine
Medical Humanities DPhil and ECR workshop
Deadline: Sunday 17 May 2026
To be held 18-19 June 2026, University of Oxford
This interdisciplinary workshop invites DPhils and ECRs within the medical humanities to share their ongoing research in a supportive environment. Those who work on topics concerning health, medicine, and disease from humanities perspectives are invited to submit abstracts. Discussion will focus on the problems of objectivity and subjectivity in medical research and practice: is there such a thing as an “objective” approach to medicine, and if not, should there be?
Medical knowledge is always situated and inevitably shaped by forms of uncertainty. We invite contributions that explore the ways in which clinical and scientific practices may reproduce structural biases, as well as how they engage with key aspects of human experience that resist quantification – such as pain, fatigue, or emotional distress. In this context, the increasing use of artificial intelligence raises further questions: does it enhance objectivity, or simply reinforce pre-existing biases?
The subjectivity of patients also generates important tensions: lived experiences do not always align with standardized scientific frameworks. We welcome contributions that examine, for instance, how such experiences may be oversimplified when translated into medical categories and terminology, or marginalized when they fail to fit pre-existing classificatory systems. We are also interested in initiatives that seek to incorporate patients’ experiences and emotions into medical practice.
In a context of increasing scepticism toward institutional medical discourse and a turn toward alternative medical practices, it is worth asking how the ideal of objectivity can be reconciled with the acknowledgment of subjective experience.
We welcome submissions from across the humanities, as well as from other disciplines, that engage with the following topics:
- Philosophical and ethical dimensions of objectivity and subjectivity
- The historical construction of “objectivity” in medicine
- Tensions between scientific norms and lived experiences
- Gender, race, and class biases in medical practice and research
- Questions of authority, uncertainty, and trust in medicine
- Artificial intelligence and medical knowledge/practice
Abstracts of up to 300 words should be submitted to medhum@torch.ac.uk by Sunday 17th May 2026. Please include a short (2-3 line) bio in your submission.
This call is open to researchers beyond Oxford, but we are unable to offer funding for travel expenses.
Coorganized by Eleanor Kerfoot and Charlotte Dewarumez
