KU Leuven Health Humanities Lecture Series: Health and the Built Environment

The KU Leuven Centre for Health Humanities in Belgium is hosting a series of hybrid lectures in 2025 exploring Health and the Built Environment.

Invited speakers will discuss various examples of the relationship between architectural space and human wellbeing, from across a range of health humanities, including architecture, literary and colonial history, sociology, and disability studies. Two of the upcoming lectures are featured below.

A History of the Hospital Corridor: Madness and Civilisation
by Roger Luckhurst
Date: 27 February 2025
Time: 4:00 PM to 5:15 PM CET
Location: Aula Emma Vorlat (Edward Van Evenstraat 4, 3000 Leuven) and online via Zoom

In this lecture, Roger Luckhurst, Geoffrey Tillotson Chair of Nineteenth Century Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, will explore the evolution of the hospital corridor from a symbol of rationality and order to one of disorientation and disorder. This talk will track the rise and fall of this architectural model and its impact on institutional spaces.

Sites of Intervention: Disability and the (Built) Environment in Imagined Futures
by Alyson Patsavas
Date: 24 April 2025
Time: 4:00 PM to 5:15 PM CET
Location: Bibliotheek Tweebronnen (Rijschoolstraat 4, 3000 Leuven) and online via Zoom

Alyson Patsavas, Assistant Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), will discuss the role of the built environment in science fiction and fantasy films, and how these environments frame disabled bodies and minds as targets of intervention. This talk will consider the crucial work performed by counter examples or representations that reimagine the targets of scientific, medicinal, and technological advances.

Both lectures are free to attend, but registration is mandatory. For more information and to register, please visit the LCH² website.