Neuro-queer Now! Exploring Mad and Affective Knowledge

Tuesday 14 November 2023, 5.00PM to 6:30

Join the Mad Feeling Collective (Dr Veronica Heney, Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University; Dr Kelechi Anucha, Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter; Sarah Lahm, School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds; and Dr Francesca Lewis, Centre for Women's Studies, University of York) for a series of short provocations and a roundtable discussion on the value of neuroqueer approaches and mad knowledges in feminist academia. The seminar will draw on each member's own research as well as on the collective's work-in-progress. The Mad Feeling Collective is an interdisciplinary research collective which brings lived experience and affect-led approaches to explorations of madness on TV.

Kelechi Anucha completed her PhD in English at the University of Exeter as part of the Waiting Times Project and an associate member of the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. Her doctoral project examined the relationship between time and care in contemporary end-of-life narratives. She is a member of the Black Health and Humanities Network. Her current research project focuses on how genre mediates encounters with madness in cultural forms.

Veronica Heney is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University, exploring narratives and experiences of anxiety. Blending sociological and literary analysis, her research and outputs are grounded in collaborative approaches. Together with Laura Mazzoli-Smith she co-leads the Narrative Practices Lab in the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities, which brings together academics, third sector professionals, creative practitioners, and people with lived experience to explore how narrative is used and what narrative means in the context of mental health. She is also co-founder of Make Space, a user-led collective which facilitates and transforms conversations around self-harm.

Sarah Lahm is a postgraduate researcher who is currently writing up her thesis in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. Her research is concerned with complex female characters in contemporary US TV, as well as the aesthetics and storytelling practices of twenty-first century ‘quality TV’. In her current work, she investigates the ways in which recent half-hour dramas articulate the contradictions of feminist discourse’s current junctures, particularly the trope of the fragmented female subject.

Francesca Lewis is a Lecturer at the Centre for Women’s Studies, University of York, where she gained her PhD. Her research focuses on neuroqueer and new materialist explorations of indeterminate and uncategorisable experiences, including borderline experience (borderline personality disorder). Current research interests include the ontology of ambiguous or irreconcilable identities and the cultural politics of the unseen/invisible.

Location: The Treehouse, Berrick Saul, Heslington West Campus