• Literature

Questions of identity are inherent in health, illness and medicine. Those who live with illness often describe how the experience represents a challenge to, and change in, their identities. Those who aspire to treat illness and those entrusted with caring for the sick grapple with shifting personal and professional identities. For an editor relatively new in the post, matters of identity are preoccupying. How is the journal perceived? Who are our readers and our contributors? What is this field we call ‘medical humanities’ and where does this publication sit?

These are some of the questions that have informed recent conversations with the editorial team at Medical Humanities. The discussions that have ensued have been rich and thought provoking, leading to a programme of planned development for the journal. It is a process that demands attention to identity. It serves as a reminder of the complexity and tensions inherent in defining and understanding identity. Identity may be both liberating and constraining. It is shaped and affirmed by a potent interplay of individual preferences and collective factors. Identity may be declared, elusive or assumed. It is a shifting, nuanced and contestable concept that is socially and philosophically situated.

Most people writing for, or reading, this journal will be comfortable with the contextual nature of identity. …