Organized by Charlotte Dewarumez (Université de Toulouse, France)
Thursday 11 June 2026, 2pm - 6pm
Seminar Room 63, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Register via Eventbrite.
This interdisciplinary workshop aims to investigate the notion of empathy toward the dead or diseased body in medical practice. It is often assumed that medical professionals develop a distinctive sensibility through repeated exposure to death and other emotionally charged situations. Historically, since the 19th century, the cultivation of emotional detachment was considered essential to the making of the medical professional, and played a central role in establishing medicine as an objective scientific discipline. However, recent research in the Medical Humanities has emphasized the need for more empathetic approaches to medical practice. By bringing together medical practitioners and humanities scholars, this workshop wishes to interrogate the historical, cultural, and pedagogical dimensions of medical detachment, to examine the challenges it creates for students and practitioners, and to consider how cultivating greater empathy might contribute to reshaping professional norms and improving the patient experience.
Programme:
2:00–2:15 – Alberto Giubilini (Academic Lead of Medical Humanities) & Charlotte Dewarumez (Organiser), Welcome and introduction
2:15-3:45 – Panel 1 – A History of Medical Detachment (chair: Matthew Landrus, Faculty of History)
2:15–2:35 – Eleanor Kerfoot (Faculty of History, Oxford), Medical Detachment and the Dead Body: the Case of 19th-Century Britain
2:35–2:55 – Martin Robert (Institut Catholique de Paris, France), Dissection and Detachment: Perspectives from the History of Human Dissection
2:55-3:15 – Charlotte Dewarumez (Université de Toulouse, France), An Art Historical Perspective on the Relationship Between Anatomists and Specimens
3:15–3:50 – Q&A and discussion
3:50–4:25 – Break
4:25-6:00 – Panel 2 – Negotiating Empathy and Distance in Contemporary Medicine (chair: Ariel Dempsey, Faculty of Theology and Religion)
4:25–4:45 – Paquita de Zulueta (Imperial College London), The Challenges to Developing and Sustaining Compassion in 21st-Century Healthcare
4:45–5:05 – Felicity James (Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare, Leicester), Creative Empathy in Practice
5:05-5:25 – Jim Harris (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), Title TBC
5:25–6:00 – Q&A and discussion
Medical Humanities Research Hub, TORCH Research Hubs
