Ayurvedic Man.

Welcome to the Medical Humanities Initiative

The Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative is a University-wide collaboration between Georgetown College of Arts and Sciences and Georgetown University Medical Center. We promote learning, development, and discovery at the intersection of the humanities, health, and healing.

Learn More About Us

How do we understand health, illness, and healing? What is the relationship between suffering, personhood, care, and our responsibilities to each other? How can we critically examine health alongside technology, power, and scientific knowledge? What roles do art, aesthetic expression, creativity, and imagination play in these conversations?

Biomedical sciences answer these questions incompletely. Medical humanities is a cutting-edge field that repositions health within its broader social, cultural, and historical context. Bridging the clinic and the archive, it leverages  tools from history, philosophy, literature, social sciences, and creative arts  to explore, analyze, and critique the complex environments of  illness and health.

Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan

Medical humanities plays a frontline role in helping us understand health beyond just science—contextualizing medical knowledge and technological innovation, uncovering historical structures, giving meaning to illness experiences, confronting ethical complexities, navigating uncertainty, and  imagining better health outcomes and more just, compassionate healthcare systems for all.

Meet the Founding Director: Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan

Announcement Highlights

All Announcements

Announcements

Founding Director of the Medical Humanities Initiative, Professor Krishnan, on WHUT TV

Professor Lakshmi Krishnan was on WHUT TV with her co-executive director of the Georgetown-Howard Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice (MHHJ), Professor Dana Williams, in conversation…

November 13, 2024

Announcements

Director of Undergrad Research and Scholarship, Professor Newfield, Wins $100K Magis Prize for Research

The inaugural winners are Diana Kim, a political scientist in the School of Foreign Service; Timothy Newfield, a historical epidemiologist in the Departments of History and Biology in the College of…

October 30, 2024

Our Mission & Vision

Mission: To re-center health and healing in a broader social, cultural, and historical context

Vision: Shaping the future of health, society, and our shared humanity

Sponsors

The Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative is supported in part by a Fundamental Role of Arts and Humanities in Medical Education Grant from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Humanities Connections Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Association of American Medical Colleges National Endowment for the Humanities

Connect with Us

Georgetown University campus

Email: medicalhumanities@georgetown.edu
Office: New North #326
Instagram: Follow the @gumedhum account
X: Follow the GUMedHum account