Prof Ian Sabroe and Dr Dieter Declercq talk to Prof Paul Crawford about his ground-breaking work as the world's first professor of health humanities and his research into how creative practices advance health and mental well-being.
Check out 'What's Up With Everyone?' Paul's recent campaign with the animation studio Aardman.
Paul Crawford is Professor of Health Humanities at the School of Health Sciences and Director of the Centre for Social Futures at the Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham, UK. 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 founding father of the global and rapidly developing field of health humanities, Professor Crawford leads a large program of research in applying the arts and humanities to inform and transform healthcare, health and wellbeing. He is the author of over 140 peer-reviewed articles or chapters and 13 books, most recently The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities (Palgrave), Florence Nightingale at Home (Palgrave) and Cabin Fever: Surviving Lockdown in the Coronavirus Pandemic (Emerald). He is the commissioning editor for two series, Arts for Health (Emerald) and Routledge Studies in Literature and Health Humanities (Routledge) and is lead Editor-in-Chief for The Encyclopedia of Health Humanities (Springer). In 2021, he led the campaign for young people’s mental health called What’s Up With Everyone with Academy Award-winning Aardman (Shaun the Sheep, Wallace & Gromit). This initiative brought five original short animations to more than 18 million people and won Best Social Media and Content at the Design Week Awards 2021.
