This CIVIS course is a transdisciplinary and collaborative programme exploring the social context - in the broadest sense of the term - needed to fully understand medical and health issues and to contribute to the development of comprehensive solutions embedded in social worlds and human behaviour.

This course will equip students with theoretical and methodological concepts developed in the social sciences and humanities that are particularly relevant to the analysis and understanding of concrete situations within medicine and health.

Experts from the CIVIS universities will teach key concepts in their field and share the results of their research. They are specialised in the fields of philosophy, ethics, law, history, sociology, anthropology, behavioural economics, communication and pedagogy.

By studying scientific papers, discussing different research findings, sharing different contemporary and historical sources and exchanging their own work in progress (PhD or Master's thesis), the students will learn how medicine and health shape and are shaped by contextual factors, i.e. norms and values, knowledge and expertise, practices and activities, techniques and materialities.

The 5-day physical component will take place in Switzerland, between 30 June - 4 July 2025. It will be held at the Institute of Humanities in Medicine of the University of Lausanne.

Students will be asked to work in small groups under the supervision of the teachers participating in the course and other colleagues on site.

Each group will carry out a field project, adapted to the constraints of time and resources, on a topic previously developed online during the virtual part of the course in echo with their own PhD or Master research project.

Documentation for these projects will be gathered in the field through interviews with informants and site visits that will have been prepared in advance according to the students' wishes.

The results of these projects will be shared with the teachers present, the informants met in the field and other colleagues from this institute.

Student workload during the 5-day physical component is estimated at approximately 40 hours.

*the following programme is indicative; it will be adapted and finalised during the virtual component.

Monday, 30 June 2025:

• reception and Introduction to the programme, presentation of the participants;
• presentation and discussion of students’ projects;
• meeting with key informants.

Tuesday, 1 July 2025:

• class visits to medical and health sites;
• debrief.

Wednesday, 2 July 2025:

• interviews/ visits with informants by groups of students;
• collective work on the collected material;
• debrief.

Thursday, 3 July 2025:

• interviews/visits with informants by groups of students;
• collective work on the collected material;
• debrief.

Friday, 4 July 2025

• public symposium to present the projects of the groups;
• celebration.

The online courses will take place between 3 March - 23 May 2025.

Each of the nine modules of the course takes place over one week. Each week will consist of two three-hour class sessions. These sessions will preferably take place in the late afternoon to accommodate the availability of most participants and the time zones of participants' countries. The workshop sessions will be additional and will be scheduled in consultation with the students.

Each of the 9 main topics forms a Teaching Module supervised by one or two teachers. Each module consists of 6 hours of online face-to-face teaching (total: 54 hours), including a variety of teaching formats:

1. Ex-cathedra courses (basic concepts)
2. Dialogic presentation of case studies
3. Literature & documents seminar

The programme also includes workshop sessions for students to present their ongoing projects. Depending on the number of participants, three to four 3-hour sessions will be organised.

Out-of-class student workload is estimated at 4 hours per module, and around 10 hours to prepare personal presentations - totalling approximately 46 hours.

Preliminary programme:

• 3-7 March 2025: Welcome and general introduction (1 session)
• 10-14 March 2025: Module 1 - Diseases and medicine in contexts
• 17-21 March 2025: Module 2 - Ethical issues from clinical research to patient participation
• 24-28 March 2025: Module 3 - Legal frameworks of medical and health data
• 31 March-4 April 2025: Module 4 - Professionals-patients’ clinical relationships
• 7-11 April 2025: Module 5 - Conflict and mediation in hospital context
• 14-18 April 2025: Module 6 - Health and Environment
• 21-25 April 2025: Easter break
• 28 April-2 May 2025: Module 7 - Critical thinking
• 5-9 May 2025: Module 8 - Visual thinking strategies
• 12-16 May 2025: Module 9 - Health Education and Literacy
• 19-23 May 2025: Conclusions and organisation of the physical component (1 session)

*coaching meetings with individual students or groups will be organised on request.