Localising The Health Humanities: Educational Innovation For And With Singapore

Date: 23 October, Friday | Time: 10:30 - 12:00 | Venue: Academia Room L1-S3

Speakers: Assoc Prof Michael Dunn, Assoc Prof Nicola Ngiam, Ms Alecia Neo

Programme Description: 

Existing approaches to developing health humanities education have largely been acontextual, making little explicit effort to connect local health practice needs and nuanced socio-cultural understandings of health and illness with the arts and humanities that have flourished in those same local contexts.

However, because most of the educational work in the health humanities has evolved within western health settings, this has led to an implicit socio-cultural orientation to pedagogical thinking, embodying health concerns and adopting artistic and humanistic resources that are dominant in these contexts.

In this symposium, we seek to depart from this ‘globalist’ approach to embrace localism: making the case for developing health humanities education for and with Singapore.

The symposium will consist of three parts:

1. Making the case for localism (20 mins): the educational case for a local tailoring of health humanities learning – A/Prof Michael Dunn
2. Identifying local experiences (20 mins): This segment is based on the idea that Singaporean innovations in health humanities education should be tailored to local interpretations and realities of disease, of well-being, and of illness experience. This segment showcases such trends, with reflections on local values, beliefs, and norms around health engagement and illness experience - A/Prof Nicola Ngiam
3. Configuring local resources (30 mins): Recognising that Singaporean innovations in health humanities education should also draw heavily on local artistic and humanistic enterprises and scholarship, we introduce path-breaking examples of artistic and humanistic responses to imagining, understanding and rethinking health, illness and care as it manifests in this ethnically and culturally diverse country. Here, socially engaged artistic practices on embodied care will feature alongside an exploration of how Singaporean art can motivate new understandings of local illness experiences. - Ms Alecia Neo
4. Sharing of ideas (20 mins): This segment will engage the audience in sharing ideas and experiences with health humanities education in Singapore. The aim would be to generate interest and inspiration to take this forward in individual microcosms. -Facilitators, speakers and audience
   

Target Audience: Local educators, practitioners, artists and scholars with interests in the health humanities. There is no pre-requisite level of knowledge required.

Maximum Participants: Any number of participants