Health, Ethics and Narrative Ireland (HEANI) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary project bringing together a network of researchers to build a vibrant community of practice and research around ethical and creative narratives in clinical education and practice. It specifically aims to develop and evaluate models of medical education and practice that address reflexive approaches through narrative in relation to illness and the body. HEANI seeks to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and meaningful exchange between clinical, ethical and creative academic practices.

Physical and mental illnesses are profoundly intertwined and strongly affect our sense of self, and the subject’s lived experience of illness is important to a full understanding. Gaps in communication pose significant challenges for all parties. HEANI explores and facilitates the expression of the subject’s lived experience of illness, with the aim of enhancing communication and better serve the needs of patients and healthcare professionals. The project seeks to improve clinical and peri-clinical communication using narrative and reflexive philosophical practice. HEANI promotes patient voice and the expression of lived experience as key to enhanced understanding of the impact of illness, leading to optimal care and outcomes.

HEANI engages healthcare professionals with critical tools to listen, interpret and communicate, helping them work more effectively with persons presenting with illness. As well as enhancing patient-centred care, a vital element of this initiative is its potential to work against burnout and compassion fatigue by encouraging health care professionals to develop their own reflective spaces and practice using the rich methods of philosophy and narrative studies.

Building on the successful pilot MindReading project, HEANI brings together healthcare professionals and medical humanities scholars, forging a supportive network of clinicians and scholars whose teaching, research and practice focus on the development of interdisciplinary, educational and clinical practices utilising reflexive philosophical practice and narrative.

HEANI is a collaborative project established by Dr Elizabeth Barrett (UCD School of Medicine), Dr Clare Hayes-Brady (UCD School of English, Drama and Film) and Dr Danielle Petherbridge (UCD School of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Ethics in Public Life).

For inquiries or information about specific programs, or, if you are interested in us holding a workshop or seminar, contact Dr Danielle Petherbridge.

Associate Professor in Philosophy

Director, UCD Centre for Ethics in Public Life 

Deputy-Head, School of Philosophy 2022-2023

Previously, Dr Petherbridge was an IRC Marie-Curie International Research Fellow in the Philosophy Department at Columbia University, New York, and an IRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at University College Dublin.

Her primary research interests include phenomenology and social philosophy, medical humanities and ethics. She writes in the area of phenomenology and illness, critical phenomenology, and social philosophy. She is currently working on a research project on phenomenological approaches to dementia and mental illness, and is Principal Investigator of an Irish Research Council New Foundations funded project BodyDementia. 

Dr Petherbridge is a team member of the EU Funded Horizon 2020 grant Policy, Expertise and Trust (PERITIA) and co-founder of Health, Ethics and Narrative Ireland. She is an Expert Reviewer in Medical Humanities for the Wellcome Trust (UK).

Her book publications include Body/Self/Other: The Phenomenology of Social Encounters (2017; with Luna Dolezal), The Critical Theory of Axel Honneth (2013), Axel Honneth: Critical Essays (2011). She is currently working on two projects: one, on attention, affection and perception entitled When is One Recognizable; two, a book project entitled Encountering the Other, which provides an examination of theories of intersubjectivity specifically in social philosophy and phenomenology.

She is also Editor of the philosophy journal Critical Horizons and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Contemporary Continental Ethics (Edinburgh).

She is creator and co-founder of the International and Irish Young Philosopher Awards (IYPA). The inaugural IYPA Festival was held in 2018.

Harriet Wheelock is Keeper of Collections in Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI), with responsibility for the management and development of RCPI’s Heritage Centre. This comprises the unique library, archive and historic items relating to the history of RCPI, and the history of medicine in Ireland. In 2018 the Heritage Centre received Full Accreditation under the Museum Standards Programme for Ireland, becoming Ireland's only accredited medical museum.

Harriet worked as an Archival Student in the National Library of Ireland and completed her MA in Archives and Records Management from University College Dublin. She is currently a PhD student in the TU Dublin School of Art and Design, where her research focuses on the development and historiography of RCPI’s heritage collections. She is the co-author, with Dr Mary McAuliffe (UCD), of The Diaries of Kathleen Lynn. A life revealed through personal writing (UCD Press, 2023).

Melissa Dickson worked for nearly four years as a Postdoctoral Researcher on the Diseases of Modern Life project, before taking up her role as Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Birmingham. Her research as part of the Diseases of Modern Life team explored new ways of listening, and new understandings of the body’s physiological and psychological responses to sound and music in the nineteenth century. She has a PhD from King’s College London, and an MPhil, BA, and University Medal from the University of Queensland, Australia. She is the author of Cultural Encounters with the Arabian Nights in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2019) and a co-author of Anxious Times: Medicine and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (2019).

Working with individuals, families and organisations for over 33 years, Patsy’s extensive knowledge of emotional and mental well-being places him in an ideal position for those in need.

Patsy trained as an Integrative Psychotherapist in Cork City and also with Dr Val Wosket in Dublin and is fully registered with the Irish Council for Psychotherapy and the Irish Association of Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy. He trained in Positive Psychology at Harvard University and their Mind-Body institute. He also holds a Masters degree in social work.

Patsy offers space to explore the challenges, as well as the opportunities, of personal and professional life. One of the most experienced therapists in the North West, he seeks to support clients to resolve a range of issues in both realms - including the inter-play between professional roles and personal identity; panic, stress, anxiety and depression and patterns of communication at work and at home. He offers specialist support with childhood and/or adult trauma. Patsy’s extensive background as a Senior Practitioner Social Worker and in other related fields is an important contributor in aiding the therapy process.

Professor Neil Vickers works at King's College London (KCL). He was a Visiting Professor at UCD last year, delivered a wonderful seminar series and has been such an active and helpful contributor over several years. Neil Vickers is Professor of English Literature and the Health Humanities at KCL where he is also co-director of the Centre for the Humanities and Health. He has had two careers, one in literature (at Oxford, Cambridge and KCL) and one in epidemiology (at University College London and at St. George’s Hospital Medical School). He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Université de Paris VII (Jussieu). His MPhil and DPhil research - on Coleridge - was carried out at Balliol College, Oxford. Neil's book, Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and Abandonment will be published by Reaktion Books in the Summer of 2024. He recently began work on a new book project on the history of the medical humanities.

Dr Clare Hayes-Brady is a lecturer in American Literature at University College Dublin. Her PhD focused on communication in the work of David Foster Wallace. Other research interests include the interaction of literature with film; transatlantic cultural heritage; performative sexuality (both normative and queer), resistant gender modes and the history of burlesque; digital humanities and modes of transmission; adolescence in contemporary fiction, and dystopian narrative. Dr Hayes-Brady has published and presented widely on aspects of contemporary American Literature, with a particular focus on gender identity and voice. Her monograph on Wallace, The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic (February 2016).

Azza Warraitch is a PhD student at Trinity Centre for Global Health. Her PhD research is focused on the involvement of adolescents in health research using evidence syntheses, qualitative methods, and participatory methods. Before her doctoral studies, Azza earned an MPhil in Applied Psychology and worked as a research coordinator and junior research fellow with non-profit organisations in Pakistan on interventions to promote the mental health of school-going adolescents in rural Pakistan.