Though health sceptics of one kind or another have been around for centuries, the pandemic has made them newly visible. Initially, it was mask-abstainers and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists who grabbed headlines. In recent months, they have ceded space to the vaccine hesitant who, sceptics of these sceptics say, threaten to stall out our effort to bring the pandemic to an end. 

Understanding these sceptics has become increasingly vital, and this is the goal of the Healthy Scepticism project. Tracking a chronology that stretches from the early 20th century dissenters of medical orthodoxy, to the critical, anti-establishment voices of mid-century, and up to our current crisis, this multimedia, multidisciplinary project seeks to know and contextualise those who have been placed or placed themselves outside of healthcare’s formal limits. Listening to the voices of medicine’s critics, its doubters, its dispossessed, its antagonists means taking seriously their complaints, offering another way to tell the fraught 20th century history of healthcare.

The project then uses this history to reflect on our contemporary moment, especially as we make our way out of pandemic and survey the damage it has done. Via in situ research, community, policy and practitioner collaborations, contemplative artistic projects, and public engagement activities, the project seeks to learn how we can inspire and enact positive, inclusive, effective healthcare change by applying to it a new and healthy scepticism.