The human and social sciences of medicine and health is an interdisciplinary field of academic research that investigates the foundations, meanings and limits of medicine and health care across time and space. It reflects specifically upon the integration of medicine and health care into society at large, in both a critical and constructive way.
At the University of Lausanne, the Institute of the Humanities in Medicine (IHM), being part of the CHUV, is a center of gravity for these research activities: it is composed of four major axes of research: history of medicine and public health, socio-anthropology of medicine, normative research on medicine (philosophy, ethics, and law), as well as applied humanities (spirituality and communication science in medicine). The IHM has strong links to the clinical specialties of the CHUV and Unisanté, but also to the field of cantonal and national health policy.
The IHM offers a platform for PhD projects on all kinds of topics in the humanities and social sciences of medicine. PhD students will benefit from a rich and diversified offer of conferences, symposia and colloquia, multiple professors and postdoctoral researchers as supervisors in the field, as well as a renowned library with one of the largest collections of books and objects linked to the field.
The program is ruled by an interdisciplinary steering committee composed of members of the Faculty of Biology and Medicine and of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of UNIL.
