ARTS40230: Reimagining Health Research: Methodologies in the Critical Medical Humanities

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• To equip students with advanced knowledge and skills in critically appraising key health research methodologies utilised in the critical medical humanities.
• To foster students ability to assess ideas and evidence from a variety of sources and kinds of evidence bases, and to choose, justify, or critique work done in across the key disciplines within the critical medical humanities
• To engage students in reflective work that encourages the denaturalisation of their existing competences, habits, and disciplinary backgrounds, as well as fostering their interdisciplinary literacy
• To contribute towards students' preparation for carrying out research projects in the critical medical humanities

• This module will introduce students to a variety of research methodologies utilised in critical medical humanities research. Students will gain foundational familiarity with critical methodologies (including close reading, the use of case studies, narrative and thematic analysis, historical textual/archival research, conceptual engineering, and phenomenology); qualitative methodologies (including conducting interviews, working with focus groups, qualitative surveys, ethnographic and participatory action approaches) and quantitative methods that can support interdisciplinary medical humanities research. Students will be able to situate their knowledge of different disciplinary methodologies in relation to inter- and transdisciplinary approaches that have been developed within the critical medical humanities. Students will gain practice in the evaluation of different kinds of evidence and assessing the strengths and limitations of methodological approaches within the varied contexts of health research. Working collaboratively, students will have the opportunity to apply this knowledge in the design of original research projects.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Identify the strengths and limitations of a range of critical, qualitative and quantitative research methodologies as they are used within the medical humanities, and as they function to situate debates about health, illness and medicine within broad debates about social, political and economic processes and disciplinary commitments.
• Critically reflect upon their own disciplinary and/or professional background and/or training
• Recognise and articulate the importance of interdisciplinary research on health and some of the difficulties it involves
• Utilise their knowledge of a variety of research methodologies to design multi- and interdisciplinary research projects with a health relevance

Subject-specific Skills:

• Analyse and evaluate key research methodologies from the humanities and social sciences as they are applied within a health-related context
• Identify methodologies appropriate to answering complex health questions and justify those selections
• Differentiate multi- and interdisciplinary approaches, articulating their value within the context of health-related research
• Apply knowledge of different methodological approaches in the design of research projects and communicate this effectively in written proposals to a high standard

Key Skills:

• Acquire complex information of diverse kinds in structured and systematic ways, using a wide range of subject-specific and interdisciplinary tools and sources
• Evaluate and interpret complex information of diverse kinds produced by a range of methodological approaches
• Engage critically with discipline-specific and interdisciplinary health research through rigorous evaluation of the way diverse forms of evidence are produced, valued and analysed
• Demonstrate independence of thought and judgement
• Formulate a research question or problem and design a multi- or interdisciplinary approach to its investigation
• Work collaboratively with students of varied backgrounds
• Reflect upon the nature of their experiences, and the capacity to improve own learning and performance through independent learning and peer feedback.
• Plan work effectively, with appropriate time-management skills.

• This module will be delivered online by the Department of English Studies. It will be team taught by staff from the Departments contributing to the Medical Humanities programme. Most learning will be asynchronous; however, students will have two in-person meetings with their tutor or supervisor and will form independently convened study groups with other students to complete the methodology portfolio. The module will be assessed through a progressive paper (30%) and report (20%), completed independently, and a methodology portfolio (50%), completed collaboratively. The progressive paper, as the name implies, is completed in stages and incorporates formative elements. It supports students to critically reflect on their own disciplinary background in formulating a question that can then also be explored using one or more of the other methodologies explored in the module. The methodology portfolio supports students to practice working with peers from different professional and academic backgrounds to design a collaborative critical medical humanities research project. Each student group will produce a portfolio outlining their understanding of a given research question or topic and proposing a programme of research to address this within given time and personnel constraints. Group presentations will be made available to peers. In the third summative assessment, students will write a report independently evaluating their own and other groups proposals, gaining experience of justifying their assessments of methodological decisions.

Progressive Paper elements which contribute to the overall 2000 words: Intuitive Response Paper 400 words, Framing an Alternative Methodology 800 words, Reflection Task 400 words.

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