D’Oyly Carte PhD studentship in performance and medicine

Applications are now open for the D’Oyly Carte doctoral studentship in performance and medicine. The successful candidate will be based in the Centre for Education within the GKT School of Medical Education and supervised by the D’Oyly Carte Senior Lecturer in Arts and Health, Dr Alex Mermikides, whose expertise is in performance.

Scope

Your proposed research should aim to evidence how performance might be used to address urgent challenges and opportunities faced by future doctors and those who teach them. ‘Performance’ is defined broadly, to encompass staged or scripted performances (for example theatre, live art, popular forms), applied performance practices, or as a lens for analysing human behaviour and interaction. These pragmatic and conceptual perspectives promise fresh approaches at a time when the welcome diversification of the medical student population challenges models of medical authority and objectivity tainted by medicine’s colonial and patriarchal history; and when expectations and values set by professional frameworks (for example patient-centredness and empathy) are strained by the reality of working in a healthcare service rocked by challenging working conditions. As the NHS launches its Long Term Workforce Plan, your research should aim to investigate how performance might generate conceptual insights, educational innovation and/or methodological approaches to help us understand and support the upcoming cohorts of medical professionals. Suitable research topics include but are not limited to:

• generating performance-based educational innovations that aim to ‘future proof’ our medical students for a career within the NHS
• challenging and expanding perceptions of what it means to be a doctor through analysis of staged and ‘real world’ performances
• deepening understanding of medical school culture and medical professional identity formation through concepts of performativity
• creative approaches to accessing patient experiences of medical care, for example in relation to specific communities or health conditions

For further details please visit the studentship webpage.