• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
  • Accessibility options
University of Brighton
  • About us
  • Business and
    employers
  • Alumni and
    supporters
  • For
    students
  • For
    staff
  • Accessibility
    options
Open menu
Home
Home
  • Close
  • Study here
    • Meet us
    • Open days
    • Virtual tours
    • Upcoming events
    • Applicant days
    • Meet us in your country
    • Chat to our students
    • Ask us a question
    • Order a prospectus
    • Our campuses
    • Our four campuses
    • Accommodation options
    • Our halls
    • Helping you find a home
    • What you can study
    • Find a course
    • Full A-Z course list
    • Explore our subjects
    • Our academic departments
    • How to study with us
    • Undergraduate application process
    • Postgraduate application process
    • International student application process
    • Apprenticeships
    • Applying through Clearing
    • Transfer from another university
    • Fees and financial support
    • Undergraduate finance
    • Postgraduate finance
    • Our funding and support options
    • Supporting you
    • Your wellbeing
    • Student support and guidance tutors
    • Study skills support
    • Careers and employability
  • Research
    • Research and knowledge exchange
    • Research and knowledge exchange organisation
    • The Global Challenges
    • Centres of Research Excellence (COREs)
    • Research Excellence Groups (REGs)
    • Our research database
    • Information for business
    • Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP)
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • PhD research disciplines and programmes
    • PhD funding opportunities and studentships
    • How to apply for your PhD
    • Research environment
    • Investing in research careers
    • Strategic plan
    • Research concordat
    • News, events, publications and films
    • Featured research and knowledge exchange projects
    • Research and knowledge exchange news
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Research and knowledge exchange publications and films
    • Academic staff search
  • About us
  • Business and employers
  • Alumni, supporters and giving
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility
Search our site
Research Journals
Research and knowledge exchange
  • Postgraduate research degrees
  • Research features
  • Research organisation
  • Research environment
  • Research features
    • Research features
    • Films and publications
    • News
    • project-archive
    • R&E Newsletters
  • Films and publications
    • Films and publications
    • Films
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Making research matter
    • Transforming research
    • Brighton Futures
  • Inaugural lectures
    • Inaugural lectures
  • Professor Kathleen Galvin

Inaugural lecture from Professor Kathleen Galvin

Back to 'the matters': the need for the existential in caring

Professor Kathleen Galvin

Professor of Nursing Practice

Wednesday 22 March 2017 at 6.30 pm

Sallis Benney Theatre
58-67 Grand Parade
Brighton BN2 0JY

Watch our other inaugural lectures online

In our unpredictable times, where knowledge is increasingly contested, it seems there is no more urgent a time to ‘get back to the matters’ and to explore and reveal what has been overlooked right there. There is an increasing need for a solid foundation that we can stand on, which is complex enough to do justice to understandings of the dilemmas and vulnerabilities in human life. Such a knowledge foundation, built on ideas from phenomenology, can not only inform directions for practice (in my case nursing, health and social care), but can usefully undergird new understandings for shared human experiences that are highly relevant for our precarious times.

Using delineation of well-being, suffering and dignity as an entry point, this lecture will make a case for an existential foundation for care which strikes at the heart of the capacity to care. Such existential foundations can offer a rich descriptive vocabulary that goes far beyond ‘signs and symptoms’, can act as a sensitising resource, opening up connection to our shared vulnerable heritage. The paper will draw on phenomenological research, philosophical writings, and the arts to point to ‘what is shared’ as a way of guiding care that can meet humans in their vulnerabilities and in their freedoms. Beginning with remembering care as not just ‘doing’, it will point to how care has become obscured, not just by the necessities of efficient and effective health care delivery but also within a wider cultural context where human values are increasingly ruptured from the lifeworld. Phenomenology is one way to remember the essence of care, rightly taking care back to the existential matters of wellbeing, suffering, freedom, vulnerability and dignity.

Please enable targeting cookies in order to view this video content on our website, or you can watch the video on YouTube.

Back to top
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn icon

Contact us

University of Brighton
Mithras House
Lewes Road
Brighton
BN2 4AT

Main switchboard 01273 600900

Course enquiries

Sign up for updates

University contacts

Report a problem with this page

Quick links Quick links

  • Courses
  • Open days
  • Order a prospectus
  • Academic departments
  • Academic staff
  • Professional services departments
  • Jobs
  • Privacy and cookie policy
  • Accessibility statement
  • Libraries
  • Term dates
  • Maps
  • Graduation
  • Site information
  • Online shop
  • COVID-19
  • The Student Contract

Information for Information for

  • Current students
  • International students
  • Media/press
  • Careers advisers/teachers
  • Parents/carers
  • Business/employers
  • Alumni/supporters
  • Suppliers
  • Local residents