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

On-Call: A Conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci

Thursday, Nov 6, 2025 | 5:00pm – 6:30pm EST | Gaston Hall Join the Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative on 6 November 2025 at 5:00 pm in Gaston Hall for a fireside chat with America’s…

September 10, 2025

Announcements, Scholarship

Medical Humanities Research Fellowship

Are you ready to bring your vision for a medical humanities research project to life? The Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative is funding undergraduate ($1,000), graduate…

September 26, 2025

Announcements

The Art of Care: Georgetown Collaborators Devise a New Play Highlighting Connections Between Theater and Medicine

“We must go beyond the traditional biomedical approach and normalize a bio/psycho/social approach to how we care for populations,” says Professor Christopher King

September 26, 2025

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