Health Humanities Seminar: Health and the Built Environment

The Leuven Centre for Health Humanities offers an interdisciplinary research seminar for PhD students from all backgrounds (biomedical sciences, natural sciences and humanities). The focus of this year’s seminar is on “Health and the Built Environment”, in close relation to the Centre’s Lecture Series. The seminar explores how constructed physical space – the so-called built environment – impacts on our behaviours, our social interactions, and our physical and mental health.

Participating doctoral researchers attend six lectures by international speakers, from different fields, which are followed by in-depth discussions, moderated by professors at KU Leuven. In doing so, they are introduced to the rich tool box of the (social) sciences and the humanities, including History, Disability Studies, and Architectural Design Research, enabling them to understand the relation between health and space in all its complexities. We invite PhD researchers to broaden their horizons by becoming acquainted with topics as varied as colonial hospital architecture in Congo, the experience of hospital space by cancer patients, the connections between buildings and disabled bodies in science fiction movies, and the architectural evolution of retirement homes.

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

• 13 February 2025
  The Roles of Cancer Care Facilities in Users’ Well-being by Pleuntje Jellema
• 27 February 2025
  A History of the Hospital Corridor: Madness and Civilisation by Roger Luckhurst
• 27 March 2025
  “At least the Belgians built hospitals!”: Myths and Realities of the Belgian ‘Medical Model Colony’ by Simon De Nys-Ketels
• 24 April 2025
  Sites of Intervention: Disability and the (Built) Environment in Imagined Futures by Alyson Patsavas
• 8 May 2025
  Architectural Neuroimmunology: Examining the Impact of Architectural Form on Neurophysiological Activity by Cleo Valentine
• 22 May 2025
  The ‘Return’ of the Retirement Home: Anthropology, Architecture and Policy Analysis in the Historiography of Postwar Housing for Older People in the Netherlands by Karin Bijsterveld

Find more information here.