Paul Crawford
Paul Crawford
Professor of Health Humanities, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences
Institute of Mental Health
UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM
Keynote Speech: Creative Global Health
Professor Crawford will introduce health humanities and an array of clinically relevant, largescale and award-winning developments in the field. He will outline the significant impacts that creative practices can have on health and wellbeing and discuss implications for clinical settings and beyond. He will set out how health humanities can be part of diverse practices while also envisioning how the global south may soon be leading the way in this field.
Biography
Paul Crawford is Professor of Health Humanities at the School of Health Sciences, Director of the Centre for Social Futures at the Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham, UK. He is also Adjunct Professor at Canberra University, Australia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health (FRSPH). As the founding father of the new, global and rapidly developing field of health humanities, Professor Crawford has spearheaded research in applying the arts and humanities to inform and transform healthcare, health and well-being.
Most recently, Professor Crawford led the What's Up With Everyone campaign with Academy-award winning Aardman (Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run etc.) to support the mental health literacy of young people. This campaign co-created with young people five short original films and a companion website, whatsupwitheveryone.com, focusing on perfectionism, loneliness & isolation, competitiveness, social media and independence. This upstream initiative, funded with a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (£808,690; AH/T003804/1), brought together production, research, charitable, clinical, and communication expertise (Aardman, University of Nottingham, University of Loughborough, London School of Economics and Politics, Mental Health Foundation, Happy Space, Buzz Consulting, ILK). This campaign was shown to increase mental health literacy among young people, reaching over 17m in the first four months of launch alone. The project won several awards including Best Social Media Content in the 2021 Design Week Awards and Best Public Engagement Initiative in the 2024 Institute for Policy and Engagement Awards.
Professor Crawford was also Principal Investigator for a second current, major project funded by the Arts Humanities Research Council: Florence Nightingale Comes Home for 2020 (£677,065; AH/R00014X/1) and Co-Investigator for the ESRC/ UKRI funded 'MARCH Network' (£1,014,879; ES/S002588/1) to enhance public mental health and well-being. He is currently co-investigator for the ESRC project 'Influencer Stories of Mental Health and Young People' (£768,463; ES/Y001966/1)
He has held several visiting professor or advisory board appointments in the UK and overseas. He is also Principal Investigator for three AHRC-funded networks to advance health humanities, attracting over £7m in prestigious research funding.
Professor Crawford has written over 140 publications including peer-reviewed papers or chapters and 15 books, most recently Mental Health LIteracy and Young People (Emerald, 2023), Cabin Fever: Surviving Lockdown in the Coronavirus Pandemic (Emerald, 2021) Florence Nightingale at Home (Palgrave, 2020) [Winner of Best Achievement Award, The People's Book Prize 2022], and The Routledge Companion for Health Humanities (Routledge, 2020). He remains the leading figure in health humanities worldwide with two additional major publications: Health Humanities (Palgrave, 2015) and The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Health Humanities (Springer, 2021). He is Commissioning Editor for the 'Arts for Health Series' (Emerald) to advance public understanding of the health humanities and the benefits of creative practices for human health and well-being and 'Routledge Studies in Literature and Health Humanities' (Routledge).
His earlier work includes four books on health communication: Evidence-based Health Communication (Open University Press: Maidenhead, 2006), Communication in Clinical Settings (Nelson Thornes: Cheltenham, 2006), Storytelling in Therapy (Nelson Thornes: Cheltenham, 2004), and Communicating Care: The Language of Nursing (Stanley Thornes: Cheltenham, 1998) which was the first book on nursing language worldwide. His book on research philosophy in health won a Highly Commended Award at British Medical Association Book Competition 2004: Evidence Based Research: Dilemmas and Debates in Health Care (Open University Press: Maidenhead, 2003). He has also written two literary critical works: Madness in Post-1945 British and American Fiction (Palgrave: London, 2010) and Politics and History in William Golding: The World Turned Upside Down (University of Missouri Press: Columbia, 2002). His acclaimed first novel about mental illness, Nothing Purple, Nothing Black (Book Guild, 2002) was optioned for film with Dramahouse, UK/ Florida. His second novel, The Wonders of Doctor Bent, will be out in February 2025..
Professor Crawford on the editorial boards of Journal of Medical Humanities, Communication & Medicine and Applied Arts in Health and acts as a referee for several prominent publishing houses and major journals. He has also written articles and letters for national and regional newspapers and appeared on BBC Radio 4 (Today Programme, Woman's Hour), Radio 2 (Johnnie Walker), 5 Live (Simon Mayo) and various regional shows.
My Twitter: @ProfessorPaulC1