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CHM Arts is dedicated to the idea that art has a crucial role to play on both individual and societal levels in the process of creating and maintaining health and well-being.
In healing practices, it can be said that the first key to physical health is the ability of the body to express itself, to communicate what it is feeling and experiencing. The second key can be described as the ability of the healer to understand and to be empathetic with the condition that is being expressed. This is equally true of other dimensions of health and well-being, whether mental, cultural or societal. In his famous essay, ‘What Is Art’, the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy described the activity of art as being ‘based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it.’ One of the chief ailments of contemporary society in general, and Hong Kong society in particular, is the growing sense of isolation and alienation experienced by many even in the midst of exploding populations. Numerous studies in fields such as medicine and sociology have pointed to the potential of an engagement with the arts as a means to increase levels of well-being in areas such as mental health, social inclusion and levels of empowerment.
CHM Arts seeks to:
Past Activities:
CHM Arts, together with the International Cultural Leadership Academy at the University of Hong Kong, was pleased to support Hope and Glory: A Conceptual Circus. Conceived by the artist Simon Birch, this was Hong Kong’s largest ever installation art show supported by the HKSAR Mega Events Fund, which took place at the ArtisTree in Taikoo Place between 8 April to 30 May 2010.
In collaboration with the Birch Foundation and with the generous support of Louis Vuitton, CHM Project Arts hosted an art forum at the ArtisTree on 14 May 2010.
The Centre for the Humanities and Medicine seeks to promote research into the social, cultural, legal and political issues surrounding the development and transference of new biomedical technologies, including genomics. The Centre is developing a network of collaborative relations with other leading centres in the US, Europe and China.
Past Activities:
A brainstorming session, collaborating with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is scheduled for November 2011 at the University of Hong Kong.
As part of this research theme, a workshop on genomics entitled Beyond the Individual: People, Population, Genetics took place in Hong Kong on 27 April 2009, drawing on expertise from psychiatry, microbiology, pathology, biomedical engineering, genome research and medical ethics.
Hong Kong has a long history of research on communicable disease: from the discovery of the plague bacillus by Alexandre Yersin and Shibasaburo Kitasato during the plague epidemic of 1894, to the identification of the SARS-Coronavirus at The University of Hong Kong in March 2003. The Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese – the predecessor of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong – was founded by the London Missionary Society with the support of Sir Patrick Manson in 1887.
As a commercial and cultural hub networked into Asia and the world, Hong Kong provides a unique vantage point for studying the challenges and opportunities posed for health security by the new global interconnectedness.
The aim is to promote collaborations between those working across a range of fields including History, Geography, Anthropology, the Social Sciences, Public Health and Medicine in order to generate fresh thinking on the ways in which epidemics are shaped by socio-cultural, political and economic forces. A key focus of the research theme is on understanding the impact of disease on socio-cultural environments and on bringing comparative historical approaches to the study of epidemics, particularly within the context of the reciprocal relationship between East Asia and the West, one of the University of Hong Kong’s key strategic research themes.
The Contagions research theme is informed by the principle that understanding epidemics as cultural, as well as a biological phenomena, is key to the formulation and implementation of effective public health policies. The Contagions research theme is closely connected with the Humanitarian Programme and Natural Disasters research project.
Past activities:
– International workshop Histories and Ecologies of Health
– International workshop on Phones, Drones and Disease: Epidemic Intelligence and the Future of Communications in East Asia was held on 17-18 May 2018
– International conference Animal Histories in Human Health: Comparative Perspectives from East Asia, 1850-1950 was held on 26-27 March 2015
– International conference Panic: Disease, Crisis and Empire was held on 10 – 11 December 2012
– International conference Disease and Crime was held on 18 – 19 April 2011
– A special session of the international conference: Constructing Pandemics, was held on 13 July 2010 at The University of Hong Kong.
– A workshop on Imperial Contagions was held between 9 – 11 December 2009 at The University of Hong Kong.
For further information, please contact Prof Robert Peckham or Dr Ria Sinha.
Healing traditions have developed in all parts of the world. Prevention and treatment have been an integral part of dealing with human conditions, and biomedicine is only one of these traditions. In the Health and Asia Research theme we focus on the history, transmission and exchange of healing traditions across Asia, from China and India to West Asia, including their religious worldviews. We aim to explore the interactions between different cultural understandings of health in Asia and the West and the transformation of Asian healing traditions in modern times. The effects of development, modernization and globalization on health and health care in Asia are also of critical concern.
Health and Asia will explore the following areas:
This research theme seeks to provide an interdisciplinary platform for historians, linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, scholars of religious studies, health practitioners, doctors, policymakers, artists and students to engage in discussions and exchange ideas. Outcome will include publications, exhibitions, short documentaries, workshops and symposiums.
Related Initiatives:
– Hong Kong Forum for the History of Medicine in East Asia
– Transnational Asian Cities
Past Activities:
– International Workshop on Infectious Routes: Epidemics and Migration in Asia
– “Stand Up Straight”: Posture and the Meanings Attributed to the Upright Body, jointly organized with the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, was held on 14 January 2011.
– The first workshop on Convergence and Collisions: Disease, Religion and Healing in Asia was held on 25 and 26 March 2010 and an edited volume Disease, Religion and Healing in Asia: Collaborations and Collisions was published by Routledge in 2014.
The CHM Humanitarian Programme explores the relationship between power, politics, moral obligation and emergency health interventions, specifically in relation to supranational institutions, the state and NGOs. A key focus of the research theme is on investigating the consequences for humanitarian efforts of an increasingly interconnected world.
Prof Didier Fassin from the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, has been appointed to a Visiting Research Professorship at the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine. Prof Fassin trained and practiced as a physician and holds a doctorate in anthropology. In his work he has developed an ethnographic approach to study critical public health issues within socio-cultural and political contexts. As Visiting Research Professor, he spent time at the Centre over a period of three years, working with faculty in both Arts and Medicine to develop the CHM Humanitarian Programme. Prof Fassin visited the University of Hong Kong between 2011 to 2013.
Forthcoming Activities:
– Details of Humanitas 2019 coming soon
Past Activities:
– Humanitas 2013, from 22 April to 30 April 2013
– Seminar on Sex, Gender and ICD-11: what to do about all those people down there in Blocks 64-66 by Dr. Sam Winter
– Humanitas 2012, from 21 May to 28 May 2012
– Public lecture on When Humanitarianism Goes to War on 11 May 2011
– Lunchtime seminar on Global Health and Conspiracy Theories on 13 May 2011
– The Art of Humanity: A Public Conversation
The Centre for the Humanities and Medicine is pioneering new teaching and learning methods in medicine.
Since 1997, with the introduction of problem-based learning, the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine has been at the forefront of medical education reform. Today, advances in biomedical sciences, particularly genetics, together with the development of personalised medicine and stem-cell therapies are fundamentally changing the scope and perspectives of medical education and the practice of medicine.
Engaging with these new developments and in line with the University’s emphasis on innovation, the Centre is working through a dedicated Task Force in Medical Humanities with the aim of establishing a Medical Humanities syllabus as an integral part of the undergraduate medical curriculum within the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, in addition to formulating Humanities Common Core Curriculum modules by 2012 linked to a University-wide curriculum reform.
The Centre is committed to promoting the cross-listing of humanities modules into the clinical curriculum, and seeks to foster a closer interrelationship between teachers in medicine and the humanities including history, literature, philosophy, sociology, the visual arts, music, religious studies, ethics and the law.
Understanding and alleviating the suffering of patients with chronic illnesses and incurable diseases is often seen as a lower priority compared to the quest for goals such as curing cancer, delaying ageing or reversing neurodegenerative disorders. Given the stressful situations and conditions which healthcare professionals work under, the Medical Humanities programme seeks to empower doctors and nurses with skills to better look after themselves, both physically and mentally. Taken together, the new programme will underscore the importance of human and humane aspects of medical practice which are crucial if medicine and healthcare are to successfully reap the benefits of science and technology.
The aim is to ensure that students are sensitized to the experiences of patients and are able to meet the expectations and demands of society, as well as being taught to the highest ethical and professional standards.
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