A pandemic of breathlessness?
Just as we are wrapping up our five-year project, we find ourselves in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and…
Catch Your Breath exhibition
Stop where you are and take a deep breath.How does it feel?What does it make you think?How many breaths have…
Dance Easy videos
Presented by dance facilitator, respiratory public health specialist and programme creator Sian Williams, these videos can help people with breathlessness get moving to improve their health and wellbeing.
‘It’s hard to think without your pants on’: patients as knowers
On Friday 18 October 2019 at Foyles Bookshop in London (Charing Cross Road), Prof Havi Carel delivered a talk ‘It’s…
X-rays don’t tell lies (McGuire, 2019)
The British Medical Research Council’s medical surveys of the South Wales collieries represent a key conflict between standardization and individuals’…
Disrupted breath, songlines of breathlessness (Malpass, Dodd, Feder, et al., 2019)
A ‘songline’ is a song used within Australian Aboriginal culture as a way to navigate across the land… Health research…
The meaning of the name ‘pulmonary rehabilitation’ (Oxley et al, 2019)
What’s in a name? Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR), an exercise and education programme, is currently the most effective non-pharmaceutical therapy for…
The COPD support group
Senior Research Associate on the Life of Breath project, clinical music therapist and mindful yoga teacher Kate Binnie visited a…
Dust to dust (McGuire, 2019)
Black lung is a disease often relegated to the domain of the history book. But can historical research tell us…
Anthropology of Tobacco (Russell, 2019)
How do we understand the relationship between tobacco and humans in light of the fact that tobacco has become one…
Mining Memories with Donald Trump in the Anthropocene (Rose, 2018)
What defines “coal identity politics” and what role might they have had in the election of Donald Trump? In this…
Dear Breath: using story structure to understand the value of letter writing for those living with breathlessness (Penny & Malpass, 2019)
Can using letters help create a personal narrative and public story, generating new ways of relating to breathlessness? A new…
Policy Recommendations
For World COPD Day 2018 and the publication of Life of Breath’s new Policy Report, consultant respiratory physician and honorary…
Reading Breath in Literature (Rose et al, 2019)
At a key moment in Hamlet’s duel with Laertes, Gertrude cries out that Hamlet ‘is fat and scant of breath’…
“Letter to my Breath” at Fun Palaces, Bristol
Life of Breath collaborator Elspeth Penny writes about her experience facilitating a “Letter to my Breath” workshop at Barton Hill…
“Breathe Happy, Breathe Healthy” Bristol mural installation
As part of the Fun Palaces campaign in October this year, Life of Breath collaborated with local Bristol artist Sophie…
Breathing through oxygen technology in Uruguay and South Africa (Wainwright, 2018)
Life of Breath collaborator Dr. Megan Wainwright introduces her new paper “Exploring ambivalent human-oxygen technology-world relations through the lens of Postphenomenlogy”…
Phenomenology’s contribution to health and illness
A new book on phenomenology and illness entitled Existential Medicine: Essays on Health and Illness is now out, with a chapter by…
‘Race Correction’ in Medicine: A History of Lung Function Measurements
The Life of Breath project was delighted to host Professor Lundy Braun in Bristol recently to speak at our bi-annual…
Breathlessness: from bodily symptom to existential experience (Williams & Carel, 2018)
Tina Williams and Havi Carel have contributed a chapter on breathlessness to this new essay collection which explores the experience…
Invisible Suffering: The Experience of Breathlessness (Carel, 2018)
In this book chapter in the volume Atmospheres of Breathing, Prof Carel considers breathlessness from a phenomenological perspective, reframing it…
Exploring the logic of respiration
Music & Mindful Yoga Therapist Kate Binnie joined Life of Breath as a researcher in January 2018. She writes: I…
Chronic breathlessness: re-thinking the symptom (Macnaughton et al, 2018)
The Life of Breath team, like our colleagues at Breathe Oxford, recently responded to the proposal that defining chronic breathlessness as…
Smog in a Time of Tobacco Control (Russell, 2017)
While in Delhi for a recent UN convention on tobacco control, anthropologist Andrew Russell reports on widespread ‘astroturfing’ – large…