Shame and Medicine Project Newsletter

SCENES OF SHAME AND STIGMA IN COVID-19 SEMINAR SERIES*
Dr Tanisha Spratt (University of Greenwich) discusses ‘Understanding Racism-Induced Stress in the Context of COVID-19: Representations of Shame, Anxiety and Stigma in UK BAME Communities’ in the last seminar of this series, on the 2nd December at 14.00 UK. Sign up here.

Prof. Robert Walker (Beijing Normal University)

Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster (McGill University)

Dr Ray Earwicker (University of Exeter)

Dr Hannah Farrimond (University of Exeter)

Dr Tanisha Spratt (University of Greenwich)

*The seminar series is organized at the University of Exeter as part of the UKRI-AHRC funded ‘Scenes of Shame and Stigma in COVID-19’ project, and addresses the key role that shame and stigma have played in the COVID-19 public health crisis.

RESPECT AND SHAME IN HEALTHCARE AND BIOETHICS WORKSHOP SERIES
Sign up to join Barry Lyons and Nataliya Shok on the 19th November at 13.00 UK when they will discuss “Stigma and the Mental Health of Healthcare Workers” and "Medical Error as a Stigma: The Moral Code in Healthcare Practice and Bioethics in Russia.”

GRAPHIC MEDICINE PROJECT
We are delighted and excited to share with you the art work by Hannah Mumby, one of the artists we commissioned to create visual representations of shame experiences in health professionals education, as part of our Graphic Medicine Project in collaboration with The Shame Conversation. For more information about how to use the images as an educational resource in order to explore the experience of shame, please visit The Shame Conversation website to take part in the ‘Shame Spiral’ graphic activity and contribute to the discussion.

OUR WORK
We have expanded our website to include a new section which features 'Our Work' detailing each strand of the project in more depth.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LIVE AND WORK WITHIN A CULTURE OF SHAME?
Shame and Medicine Project Intern Penelope Lusk reflects on her work with The Nocturnists 'Shame in Medicine' podcast series, which is exploring this question through stories from health care workers around the world. The Shame and Medicine Project is collaborating on this podcast with The Nocturnists who are hard at work on the 'Shame' series and are looking for experiences of shame related to overwork, sleep deprivation, calling in sick, needing food/bathroom breaks, etc.

PROJECT TEAM IN THE NEWS
Luna Dolezal spoke at the Media, Communication & COVID-19 Speaker Series at Bournemouth University about ‘Healthcare Workers and Online Shaming During COVID-19’, and has recently been cited in a New York Times article about the increased shame and stigma around coughing and ordinary colds.

CALL FOR DOCTORS & PATIENTS
We are keen to hear from Doctors and Patients who would like to take part in our research - to register an interest in taking part, visit www.samp.uk or contact Dr Farina Kokab at f.kokab@bham.ac.uk.

A two day workshop based at the University of Copenhagen and co-organized with the Centre for Subjectivity Research. Shame, Health and Lived Experience is an interdisciplinary workshop that will bring together scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines and fields to reflect on how experiences of shame may impact on health, wellbeing and medical practice.

The University of Exeter and the Shame and Medicine Project will host the British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference in 2022, from 30th August – 1st September. The theme is “Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions and Sociality”, and there will be a panel on “Phenomenology and Shame Experiences” sponsored by the Shame and Medicine Project. For further details visit our website.

The Shame and Medicine Project in collaboration with the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter, will run a seminar series over the next few years which will examine shame and stigma in the context of medical history. More details to follow.

The affective climate often associated with HIV prevention and care practices is often dominated by negative emotions such as shame, fear and suspicion which arise because of HIV’s historical stigma. In this special issue of lambda nordica on Queering Health and Biomedicine, which showcases scholarship from the Nordic Network Gender, Body, Health, guest editor Luna Dolezal’s article ‘Shame, Stigma and HIV – Considering Affective Climates and the Phenomenology of Shame Anxiety‘ explores the experiential consequences of this affective climate and the continued stigma associated with HIV.