We are excited to invite you to the KU Leuven Health Humanities Lecture Series 2025, organized by the Leuven Centre for Health Humanities (LCH²). This year’s theme, “Health and the Built Environment,” explores the profound impact of our constructed physical spaces on our behaviours, social interactions, and overall well-being.
“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”, or so Winston Churchill once said. For better or for worse, our constructed physical space – the so-called built environment – impacts on our behaviours, our social interactions, and our physical and mental health. The speakers of this year’s LCH² lecture series discuss various examples of the relationship between architectural space and human well-being, from across a range of health humanities, including architecture, literary and colonial history, sociology, and disability studies. In doing so, they will touch on themes as varied as the role of the corridor in hospital architecture, the connections between buildings and disabled bodies in science fiction movies, and the architectural evolution of retirement homes. Join us online and on campus, at KU Leuven, for a series of inspiring health humanities talks about the built environment.
Our distinguished speakers will cover a range of topics, including:
- 13 February 2025:The Roles of Cancer Care Facilities in Users’ Well-being by Pleuntje Jellema
- 27 February 2025:A History of the Hospital Corridor: Madness and Civilisation by Roger Luckhurst
- 27 March 2025:“At least the Belgians built hospitals!”: Myths and Realities of the Belgian ‘Medical Model Colony’ by Simon De Nys-Ketels
- 24 April 2025:Sites of Intervention: Disability and the (Built) Environment in Imagined Futures by Alyson Patsavas
- 8 May 2025:Architectural Neuroimmunology: Examining the Impact of Architectural Form on Neurophysiological Activity by Cleo Valentine
- 22 May 2025:The ‘Return’ of the Retirement Home: Anthropology, Architecture and Policy Analysis in the Historiography of Postwar Housing for Older People in the Netherlands by Karin Bijsterveld
The lecture series is free to attend, but registration is mandatory. All sessions will be held from 4:00 PM to 5:15 PM CET, either in Aula Vorlat or Bibliotheek Tweebronnen in Leuven, with an option to join online.
For more information and to register, please visit our website.