The Peter Sowerby Chair leads the Philosophy & Medicine Project, launched in 2015 with the generous support of the Peter Sowerby Foundation. The Project is a joint venture between King’s Department of Philosophy, the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, and The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery.
The Project seeks to foster interdisciplinary links between philosophy and medicine, by teaching philosophy as part of the medical curriculum, and by hosting a range of public lectures, events and activities.
The Project’s 2020 Annual Lecture, ‘What Does it Mean to Be Healthy?’, will be delivered by Robyn Bluhm (MSU), online, on December 16. For more information and to register, click here.
Professor Elselijn Kingma is the newly-appointed Peter Sowerby Chair in Philosophy and Medicine
The Peter Sowerby Chair leads the Philosophy & Medicine Project at King’s, launched in 2015 with the generous support of the Peter Sowerby Foundation. The Project is a joint venture between King’s Department of Philosophy, the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, and The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery.
The Project works to foster interdisciplinary links between philosophy and medicine, by teaching philosophy as part of the curriculum that trains clinicians, and by hosting a range of public lectures, events and activities, aiming to encourage dialogue and collaborative research across these fields.
Professor Kingma’s main research focuses on:
The philosophy of medicine: especially concepts of health and disease; the epistemology of evidence-based medicine; and the role of values in medical evidence and clinical decision-making.
The philosophy of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood: especially the rights and obligations of pregnant and birthing women, as well as those of their health care providers; the nature of pregnancy; and applications such as artificial gestation and contract pregnancy.
She said about her new appointment: “I look forward to consolidating the Project’s international profile as a centre of excellence in teaching and research in Philosophy and Medicine, and to advancing and disseminating Peter Sowerby’s vision for embedding philosophy in clinical teaching and training”.
Professor Kingma was previously Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Southampton. Between 2011 and 2019 she was Socrates Professor in Philosophy & Technology in the Humanist Tradition at the Technical University of Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Elselijn Kingma obtained undergraduate degrees in Medicine (2004) and Psychology (2004) at Leiden University, and MPhil (2005) and PhD (2008) in History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She received post-doctoral training in the Department for Clinical Bioethics, National Institutes of Health (USA). Before working in Southampton she taught at King’s College London and the University of Cambridge.
Professor Kingma is lead-investigator on a five-year, 1.2 million Euro ERC Research Grant ‘Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy (BUMP): a project at the intersection of philosophy of biology and metaphysics that investigates the metaphysical relationship between the fetus and the maternal organism. In November 2019, Kingma was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize to examine the metaphysical, ethical, epistemological and existential puzzles birth and pregnancy present.
The Project’s 2020 Annual Lecture will be held online on December 16. For more information and to register, click here
On the 3rd December it is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. One of our own MA students has prepared a poster to raise awareness of the key points which you can download here or by clicking download below. To find out more about observing the day, please click here
Panellists: Sacha Golob (Reader KCL; Director CPVA); Caterina Albano (curator and a Reader at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London); William Badenhorst (psychoanalyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London). Chaired by: Alla Rubitel, psychoanalyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society, Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London.
Coming up in 2021:
Spring 2021: “/Origin\Forward/Slash\ – In Response to Heidegger”. An exhibition hosted by the Flat Time House Gallery in collaboration with the CPVA.
Summer 2021: “Francis Bacon and Philosophy”. A two-day conference organised by the CPVA with King’s College London and the Estate of Francis Bacon.
Summer 2021: “Sound Pictures”. A mix of performances and academic papers on multi-modal appreciation, organised by the CPVA and King’s College London. Sponsored by the British Society of Aesthetics (BSA), King’s College London and the CPVA.
Website update:
The website for the Centre for Philosophy and Visual Art at King’s College London has recently been updated. It continues to bring together academics, artists and curators to explore the connections between philosophy, theory and the visual arts, but now there are also several new films, interviews and art reviews. For example, Colette Olive (PhD candidate) has just published a review of the most recent live event “A Philosophy of sin and art” which was chaired by Sacha Golob and organised in partnership with The National Gallery .
Amrou Al-Kadhi, Panellist ‘SIN’, CPVA & National Gallery, London
To find out more about future events, and in particular, our event FEAR which will run 11th December, check out our events page.
In addition, we have launched a new series of video-interviews about practitioners who combine professional philosophical research and the making of award-winning works of art. First up is Claire Anscomb.
King's Philosophy 