Objectivity and Subjectivity in Medicine | Day 1

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Day 1, Thursday 18 June 2026, 9am - 4pm | Learning Centre, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities

This interdisciplinary workshop will bring together DPhil students and early career researchers in the medical humanities to share their ongoing research in a supportive environment. Discussion will focus on the problems of objectivity and subjectivity in medical research and practice: is there such a thing as an “objective” approach to medicine, and if not, should there be?

Medical knowledge is always situated and inevitably shaped by forms of uncertainty. We invite contributions that explore the ways in which clinical and scientific practices may reproduce structural biases, as well as how they engage with key aspects of human experience that resist quantification – such as pain, fatigue, or emotional distress. In this context, the increasing use of artificial intelligence raises further questions: does it enhance objectivity, or simply reinforce pre-existing biases?

The subjectivity of patients also generates important tensions: lived experiences do not always align with standardized scientific frameworks. We welcome contributions that examine, for instance, how such experiences may be oversimplified when translated into medical categories and terminology, or marginalized when they fail to fit pre-existing classificatory systems. We are also interested in initiatives that seek to incorporate patients’ experiences and emotions into medical practice.

In a context of increasing scepticism toward institutional medical discourse and a turn toward alternative medical practices, it is worth asking how the ideal of objectivity can be reconciled with the acknowledgment of subjective experience.

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