Overview
- Based in the inter-disciplinary Wellcome Centre for Cultures & Environments of Health, you will benefit from engaged and transformative research, which draws on medical humanities, social sciences and medical sciences.
- Examine how experiences of health, illness and medical knowledge are shaped by diverse environments, cultural practices and beliefs.
- Explore how diverse types of evidence about health and wellbeing are used across different disciplines and sectors, and the impacts this has on the ways we conceive, respond to, and experience health and social care.
- Investigate how evidence from the medical humanities and social sciences can be used to help develop and evaluate innovative and effective public health initiatives.
- Upon graduation, you will be equipped to become a leader in transforming health research and health and social care practice within a range of professions.
Develop transferable skills, specialist knowledge and professional experience through interdisciplinary teaching
Top 10 in the UK for world-leading and internationally excellent research in Public Health, Health Services and Primary Care
Opportunities for health and social care professionals to undertake reflective learning through focused project work
Learn how to engage with, and communicate complex ideas across diverse publics, practitioners and policy makers
Entry requirements
Normally a 2:1 Honours degree, or international equivalent, in the social sciences, humanities or medical sciences.
Applications from industry professionals, or applicants with relevant work experience will also be welcomed.
All applicants should provide a personal statement explaining their interest in the programme and how it fits with their earlier studies.
Entry requirements for international students
English language requirements
Please visit our entry requirements section for equivalencies from your country and further information on English language requirements.
Course content
This exciting, interdisciplinary programme examines the intersections between the medical humanities, social sciences and medical sciences in addressing some of the most urgent global challenges confronting human health and wellbeing. The programme is ideal for graduates who are planning, or already undertaking a career within public health, health promotion, or health and social care, and those working in health and wellbeing related fields within the statutory, third or community sectors.
The programme has been designed to enable you to recognise and assess the cultural and environmental contexts of health and wellbeing anywhere in the world, and to build your skills to engage effectively with diverse stakeholders to enact meaningful and transformative change.
The modules we outline here provide examples of what you can expect to learn on this degree course based on recent academic teaching. The precise modules available to you in future years may vary depending on staff availability and research interests, new topics of study, timetabling and student demand.
Fees
2021/22 entry
UK fees per year:
£9,200 full-time; £4,600 part-time
International fees per year:
£19,400 full-time
Scholarships
The University of Exeter is offering scholarships to the value of over £4 million for students starting with us in September 2021. Details of scholarships, including our Global Excellence scholarships and GREAT scholarships (British Council and the GREAT Britain Campaign) for international fee paying students, can be found on our dedicated funding page.
The Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health is delighted to be able to offer up to four full bursaries for our MA programme, one of which will be specifically for low-income applicants from Black or other Minority Ethnic backgrounds. For further information on these bursaries, please visit our webpages below:
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Teaching and research
Drawing on the teaching expertise of researchers from across the medical sciences, social sciences and the humanities, this MA delivers transformative learning opportunities that will help tackle health challenges of national and global importance.
Learning and teaching
The taught component of this programme is delivered in the first two terms (full time programme) or five terms (part time programme). During this time, you will also be helped to develop a dissertation project to be completed within the remaining six months. We encourage students to develop their project alongside existing Wellcome Centre activities or in conjunction with the wide range of organisations we collaborate with. Part-time students may be able to develop dissertation projects within their workplace settings if appropriate.
How will I learn
All materials are designed for Masters level and will involve lectures, case studies, seminars and group discussions. Across and within modules, there is considerable scope for you to direct your learning towards particular fields of interest, especially through your choice of dissertation project.
Assessment
Taught modules will be assessed through essays, written reports and presentations. We use case studies and problem-based learning approaches to encourage you to work collaboratively and learn from each other. Where possible we will include field trips to local community health projects to contextualise your learning.
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Dr. Felicity Thomas
Programme Director
Professor Judith Green
Director of the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health
Professor Katrina Wyatt
Associate Professor Des Fitzgerald
Professor Laura Salisbury
Dr. Felicity Thomas
Programme Director
Felicity Thomas is a social scientist with a cross-disciplinary background spanning anthropology, public health, education and international development. She draws on narrative, ethnographic and engaged approaches to examine how lived experiences of health inequalities can inform the development of more effective and ethical health and social care policy and practice. Her current work focuses on inequalities in mental health care in the UK and in Central and Eastern Europe. Felicity is also Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Culture and Health, investigating how socio-cultural norms and cultures of working practice impact on health and wellbeing.
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Professor Judith Green
Director of the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health
Judith is a Professor of Sociology, with interests in health, biomedicine and methodology. She has over 30 years of research and teaching experience, focusing on issues including risk, accidents, mobility, professions and how evidence travels. Her methodological interests are in qualitative and mixed methods approaches for evaluating the health impacts of interventions. She teaches on the module ‘Making, Using and Contesting Evidence’
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Professor Katrina Wyatt
Katrina is a mixed methods health researcher focusing on how the conditions for transformational change are created and sustained to support health and to address health inequalities. She has spent 20 years creating a culture and practice of engaged research, working collaboratively with the people affected by the issues at hand, and those with a remit to support them. Complexity theory underpins the relational approach she and colleagues have developed, and informs their research practice as well as engagement approach with under-served communities.
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Associate Professor Des Fitzgerald
Des is a sociologist of science and medicine, whose research focuses on the social, cultural and historical impacts of the brain and mind sciences. He uses qualitative, documentary and archival methods, and has previously written about the autism spectrum, mind-wandering, and other topics in the psychological sciences and neurosciences. His current interest is in the role of psychological thinking in the design of architectural and urban space, where he is especially interested in how green or “natural” spaces have come to be thought of as psychologically therapeutic.
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Professor Laura Salisbury
Laura Salisbury is Professor of Modern Literature and Medical Humanities. Laura’s research interests in the medical humanities centre on questions of temporality and care. She is currently joint Principal Investigator on a 5-year, Wellcome-funded project called Waiting Times, which investigates what it means to wait in and for healthcare. Within the Wellcome Centre, she is working on a project called the Index of Evidence, which is a creative and critical response to the ‘crisis’ of evidence in healthcare. In literary studies, Laura works on modernist and contemporary fiction and theory and has particular expertise on neuroscience, language and psychoanalysis.
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Careers
Graduates of this Masters programme are well placed to become leaders in transforming health research and health and social care practice within a range of professions. Some examples include:
- Public Health
- Health Promotion
- National and international NGOs
- Statutory sector e.g. housing, social care
- Civil society and social enterprise innovating in transformative health
The programme also prepares you for further research, and some graduates may want to go on to PhD study within the Wellcome Centre or elsewhere.
