Meet one of our newest members, Molly George.

Kia ora koutou katoa,

I’m a social anthropologist and Teaching Fellow at the University of Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand. I have spent the past 8 years teaching medical humanities modules to health science students in a large, compulsory Health Science First Year paper. This year, the paper had 2000 health science students, and it requires a very different approach to traditional humanities teaching. Many of these students are encountering humanities for the first time, within a competitive, high-stakes programme, and we need to make unfamiliar concepts and ways of thinking accessible and meaningful at scale. We still require them to do a humanities style essay, though, which involves a team effort of offering resources, support and then marking 2000 essays!

In both teaching and in research, I often bring a humanities lens and qualitative approaches to areas often dominated by the sciences and quantitative approaches. My teaching is informed by my own qualitative health research, which in recent years (through various funded research contracts) has explored topics including Māori and Pacific families’ experiences of sleep and wellbeing, and refugees’ experiences of healthcare and access to medicines in Aotearoa New Zealand. I bring these real-world experiences into the classroom, making abstract concepts tangible and demonstrating the value of looking beyond clinical and scientific approaches alone.

I’m interested in learning more about how we teach humanities to health science students and how we help students recognise its relevance to their future health-based careers. I have also recently joined a Special Interest Group within the Society for Medical Anthropology that specializes in teaching anthropology to medical students. I’m actively reaching out to increase my knowledge and expertise in this area and connect with others doing similar work.