Education
The New Utrecht School offers different forms of education in which students are challenged to think about sickness and health in contemporary society.
An interdisciplinary perspective on health.
COVID-19 & Society
In January 2020, our lives and societies changed on a scale we had never seen before: The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
In this interdisciplinary course, organized by the Faculty of Medicine, students will first and foremost learn to think beyond the boundaries of their field. The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighted from various disciplines such as psychology, economics and public administration. Various stories of how COVID-19 has affected the world around us provide insight into the link between social problems and human disease and health. Look here for more information.
International Summer School: Interdisciplinary learning in Medicine, the Humanities, and the Arts
Research and education within the domain of healthcare are subject to rapid change. Technological developments and the democratisation of knowledge challenge us to reconsider the balance between hard science and soft skills in healthcare. At the same time, artists, artistic researchers, and humanities scholars increasingly turn their attention towards questions of health and wellbeing. Therefore, the future of thinking about illness and wellbeing is fundamentally interdisciplinary in nature. Hence, this international Summer School aims to stimulate interdisciplinarity at the intersection of medicine, the biomedical sciences, the arts, the medical humanities, and the humanities.
Minor Medical Humanities
Medical Humanities is an interdisciplinary field that is formed by the structural exchange of knowledge and insights in a collaboration between (bio)medical sciences and healthcare disciplines on the one hand, and humanities disciplines such as ethics, communication, philosophy, history and (reflection on) art on the other. The aim of Medical Humanities is to develop a solid theoretical understanding of themes such as health, disease, patient experience, sustainable care, life and death. This gives students a better insight into the perception of patients and into the healthcare system, so that they can work on innovative solutions in practice. For more information see here.
Master Medical Humanities
The master of science Medical Humanities revolves around complex challenges. An example of such a complex challenge is that we have an enormous amount of biomedical knowledge, but at the same time this knowledge is being challenged by an increasing distrust in science. Consider, for example, the suspicion towards vaccination. Such complex issues require professionals who can connect medicine and biomedical sciences with the humanities.. In this master's degree, students work on these issues. For more information see here.
Social Innovation Programme
Together with students from The New Connection and the Journal of Trial and Error, the University Medical Center Utrecht is working on a connected culture, with room for failure and uncertainty. The project consists of two parts. First, the development of an interprofessional accredited course for nurses and medical specialists. The topic of the course is meaningful encounters. Second, a series of lectures by project leaders about uncertainty and failure, in order to make the unavoidable vulnerability at UMC Utrecht a topic for discussion.
Virtual International Project Medical Humanities
The team behind the project consists of Dr Merel Visse (Drew University and Stoney Brooke University Medical School), Prof Frank Röhricht (East London NHS Foundation Trust and Queen Mary University of London) and Dr Stefan van Geelen (UMC Utrecht, Utrecht University and HKU). Spread across the academic year, the collaborating international partners will provide teaching/training opportunities on the overarching theme from their own perspectives/expertise and present coursework for the students for project work during hybrid workshops. Based on our previous research experience in clinical settings, dialogical self-theory as well as the embodiment paradigm and corresponding methodology will be used as a framework for cross-sectional and longitudinal studies to evaluate how students combine multiple roles and develop their professional identity throughout the course.