My scholarly work is situated in the discipline of medical humanities—that is, the application of insights, theories, and practices from the humanities (in my case, literature and art) to communication in bioscience and medicine. Broadly speaking, I am interested in the cultural dimensions of biomedical communication, in the mechanisms of visual narrative, and in the interplay between theory and practice. My research output takes the form of traditional scholarly papers but also of creative visual work.

The communication arenas that interest me are medical education, patient education, public health, and other public/popular venues for information about health and medicine. I am interested in how viewers in these contexts understand and respond to visual imagery and narratives on medical topics. Subject areas on which I have particularly concentrated include women’s health, and, more generally, biomedical representations of sex, gender, and physical difference.