The Wellcome Platform for Medical Humanities

A GP surgery in a deprived area, a radical community mental health centre, and an international cultural festival will serve as physical hubs for a new approach to medical humanities research. This matters because medical humanities research—which explores how culture, narrative, and the arts shape health and illness—has struggled with fragmentation, lack of diversity, and weak evidence. Researchers often work in isolation, and their findings rarely influence clinical practice or policy. The Wellcome Platform for Medical Humanities (WPMH) aims to break down these barriers by creating a structured, collaborative infrastructure. If successful, the WPMH could transform how health research is done. By embedding researchers in real-world settings—a GP practice, a mental health centre, a festival—it will generate questions that arise directly from lived experience, not just from academic theory. Six intersecting Labs will develop new methods for studying narrative, visual culture, movement, cognition, measurement, and emotion. A comprehensive training programme will equip academics, health professionals, and people with direct experience of illness to work together on ambitious research. The ultimate goal is to build a robust evidence base for how human experience shapes health, and to produce insights that could improve care, policy, and public understanding.