Angela Woods

Hearing the Voice is an ambitious interdisciplinary study of voice-hearing, or auditory verbal hallucinations, led by researchers at Durham University and funded by a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award in Medical Humanities. Our core research team includes academics from cognitive neuroscience, English literature, history, medical humanities, philosophy, psychology and theology, working closely with voice-hearers, clinicians, artists and arts-in-health practitioners. One of the project’s key aims is to develop a fuller description than has previously been possible of these enigmatic and sometimes acutely distressing experiences.

Taking voice-hearing as a case study, this seminar will examine a variety of methods – from qualitative narrative approaches to standardised clinical measures – utilised in hallucinations research, with a view to exploring the challenges, tensions and potential benefits of pursuing an interdisciplinary approach to the study of human experience.