LivingBodiesObjects: Technology and the Spaces of Health

LivingBodiesObjects is an experiment in the making and understanding of interactions between bodies, technologies, objects and health, designed to test and extend the boundaries of Medical Humanities research.

Working with a range of partners, it will take place in the context of multi-purpose/use laboratory spaces (both physical and virtual) that invite differing conceptions and practices of health experiences, and responses to them.

The ambition of the project lies in the imaginative creation of these spaces and not in any pre-emption of the materials they might produce.

The laboratories will be specifically designed to figure ideas and creativity, making spaces that provoke, facilitate and respond to the ideas and questions raised by bodies as they encounter different forms of technology.

Centring on the ways in which individuals and communities collaborate to produce work within dynamic and generative locations, the laboratories will also link to more traditional laboratory activities such as equipment, testing and use.

As a specific research development initiative, the project will further extend interdisciplinary health research practice at the University of Leeds, where its work will inform and further develop a research culture through the foregrounding of innovation in professional research management, career development and equality, diversity and inclusion.