Lauren McShane

In an interdisciplinary approach blending literary analysis, critical medical humanities, sociology (with a focus on the emerging convergence between addiction and adolescent studies) and gender-studies, this PhD project expands discussion on patient-centred medicine and the role of narratives to give voice to experiences of the neglected population of adolescents experiencing alcoholism, both personally and within their family unit. Through analyzing the experience of adolescents in France and francophone Canada as expressed textually and visually through a varied corpus of autofiction, fiction, autobiography and bandes dessinées, this project sheds light on this silenced voice of the lived experience of alcoholism. 

• Global Medical Humanities (including graphic medicine and critical medical humanities) 
• Bibliotherapy and scriptotherapy 
• Addiction Studies and Adolescent Studies 
• Contemporary Francophone Literature  
• Gender Studies (particularly in intersection with medical humanities and literary representations of medical and care practice) 
• Feminist Literary Criticism

In 2021, I received a BA, with first class honours in French and Spanish, from Queen's University Belfast. I then completed an MRes in French Studies, with a literary dissertation focusing on how a combined methodological approach of gender studies and critical medical humanities could illuminate the individuals’ experience of l’alcoolisme au feminin. My main area of study were a selection of four literary works dating from 1860 to 1960.  I was awarded my MRes, with distinction, in December 2022. 

I am currently in my first year of PhD study. My doctoral research, funded by the AHRC, through the Northern Bridge Consortium DTP, explores how reading selected contemporary fiction, autofiction and bandes dessinnées from France and francophone Ontario through a medical humanities lens sheds light on the lived experiences of adolescents experiencing alcoholism, both personally and within their family unit.