Journée d’étude – Narratives of illness : practices and practitioners
Wednesday 18 May 2011

13:00-17:00
University of Glamorgan, Treforest Campus, Hirwuan Building, Room H14

This event takes an interdisciplinary approach to illness narratives, focuses on the experiences of families and carers as well as patients, and looks in particular at how people react to and deal with their encounters with medical institutions such as hospitals by turning them into stories. More specifically, the colloquium focuses on some of the ways in which narratives and storytelling are used by medical practitioners and those working with patients and their families. To that end, it consists of a series of papers around the theme of how practitioners, patients and families can employ such stories as a means of making sense of illness and illness-related experiences. These papers will be combined with plentiful opportunities for those present to ask questions and to discuss the practical implications of this type of work.

Programme

13:00: Introduction and Welcome from Dr Martin Willis, Co-Director of the Off Sick Project

13:15: Dr Rhys Thomas, Clinical Research Fellow in Neurology at Swansea University.
Rhys will start things off by discussing art and epilepsy. It has been suggested that epilepsy (which can add thoughts, movements and visions) may help the creative process. While reviewing the lives and paintings of artists with epilepsy he will assess the impact of seizures for established and contemporary artists.

14.00: Dr Rachel Iredale, Senior Research Fellow in Medical Genetics at Cardiff University.
Rachel will be talking about the StoryBank. This is an online collection of stories about cancer genetics. It was developed in direct response to feedback from patients at the Cancer Genetics Service for Wales (CGSW), an all-Wales service for anyone with a family history of cancer. The StoryBank consists of digital stories from patients covering topics such as living with the risk of cancer, compiling a family tree, telling a family member about a cancer diagnosis and making decisions about surgery and screening. See www.cancergeneticsstorybank.co.uk

15.45: Refreshments

15.30: Karen Lewis, Project Leader of Storyworks at the University of Glamorgan.
To round off the programme, Karen will discuss her work using stories (including digital stories) from patients, carers and service users across the public services. For more information on what Karen and her team do, and the kinds of public health organisations that she works with, see http://www.storyworksglam.co.uk/index.html

16.15: Question and Answer Session

Book Your Place Now

This is a free event and open to participants from all disciplines and backgrounds. Please note that spaces are limited, so if you would like to attend, please contact Dr Richard Marsden via email rmarsden@glam.ac.uk or by post: Room FH415, Ferndale Building, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, CF37 1DL
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Off Sick Project web page:
http://literatureandscience.research.glam.ac.uk/cissmi/offsick/
Off Sick: Twitter site: http://www.twitter.com/OffSick
Off Sick Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Off-Sick/133055340078848
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Contact details:
Cardiff School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University
Humanities Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)29 20876103
Web page:
http://www.cf.ac.uk/share/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/U-Z/waddington-keir-dr-overview_new.html