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 UsHow 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.
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.
Announcements, In the Press, Media and Scholarship
Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan named 2026-2027 Fellow at Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University
Georgetown Medical Humanities’s founding director Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan has been named a 2026-2027 Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University. At Radcliffe, she will write a…
June 24, 2026
Announcements, In the Press, Media and Scholarship
Dr. Jeffrey Spike Speaking at International Conference on Clinical Ethics and Consultation
Georgetown Medical Humanities affiliate faculty Dr. Jeffrey Spike presented “What Adult Clinical Ethics Can Learn from Pediatric Ethics” at the 20th International Conference on Clinical…
June 24, 2026
Announcements, Scholarship, Upcoming Events
Call For Papers: 3rd Virtual Global Symposium On Reproduction
The Georgetown University Medical Humanities Initiative, in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Fondazione Sasso Carbaro, invites scholars, artists, clinicians,…
June 25, 2026
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
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
Email: medicalhumanities@georgetown.edu
Office: New North #326
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