The Centre for Medical Humanities warmly congratulates Professor Havi Carel on her appointment to Chair in Philosophy at Bristol University.
Professor Carel is one of the world’s leading phenomenologists of illness. She has conducted extensive investigations of the ways in which as embodied persons we experience illness primarily as a disruption of lived body rather than as a dysfunction of biological body, and also has interests in the relationship between film and philosophy, including in the context of medical education. Professor Carel also uses phenomenology to address healthcare issues, such as understanding the experience of illness, enhancing communication between healthcare practitioners and patients and identifying focused interventions.
Awarded an AHRC research network grant with Dr Rachel Cooper (2009-2011) on Concepts of Health, Illness and Disease, a Leverhulme Fellowship (2011-2012), and a British Academy Fellowship (2012-2013), Professor Carel is currently joint Senior Investigator with CMH’s Professor Jane Macnaughton on a five-year Wellcome-Trust funded project entitled The Life of Breath. Her 2008 book Illness, shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, has just been republished by Acumen, and her latest book, The Phenomenology of Illness, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press in October 2014.
As a phenomenologist and a philosopher of medicine, Havi has made a major contribution to the building the field of the medical humanities in the UK and we wish her every success for the future.