Health Humanities Lecture Series: Health and the Natural Environment

This year’s lecture series explores the entangled relations between nature and health. Bringing together perspectives from medical history, psychology, disability studies, colonial studies, and environmental humanities, the talks examine how ideas of nature have shaped—and have been shaped by— practices of care, control, and coexistence. Topics range from the rise of disposable medical technologies and their environmental costs, to colonial disease management at the cattle frontier, and from the ambivalent role of “nature” in the lives of people with disabilities to contemporary debates on the restorative effects of natural environments. The series also turns to the microbial world, challenging human exceptionalism and rethinking health as multispecies interdependence rather than biological mastery. Together, these lectures invite critical reflection on sustainability, vulnerability, and care, and offer new ways of imagining health in a world where human and nonhuman lives are profoundly interconnected. Join us online and on campus, at KU Leuven, for a series of inspiring health humanities talks.

Our distinguished speakers will cover a range of topics, including:

  • 5 March 2026
    Talking Trash: The Rise of Throwaway Medical Culture in the Age of Plastics​​
    Bruno Strasser
  • 19 March 2026
    Anthrax Management at the Cattle Frontier: Local Knowledge, Imperial Technopolitics and Transimperial Exchanges in Colonial Madagascar
    Samuël Coghe
  • 23 April 2026
    Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure
    Samantha Walton
  • 30 April 2026
    “Anyone, regardless of birth or social status, can become a Scout. There are already some deaf Scouts” – Nature and Disability through the lens of the scout camp in 1950s Sweden
    Jonathan Schlunck
  • 7 May 2026
    What Makes Nature Restorative? Evidence, Conceptual Challenges and Ways Forward​​​​​​
    Yannick Joye
  • 21 May 2026
    Thinking with Microbes
    Kristien Hens

Find more information here.

BACK TO OVERVIEW

PRACTICAL INFO

  • DATE
    05 March, 2026
  • LOCATION
    icon All lectures take place in Aula Vorlat or Bibliotheek Tweebronnen, in the city centre of Leuven, but it is possible to attend them online, with live interaction.

    3000 Leuven
    icon More information
  • TARGET GROUP
    PhD postdoc ZAP
  • LANGUAGE EVENT
    ENGLISH

ONZE UNIVERSITEITEN