Nathalie Egalite is a PhD candidate in the medical humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch. She holds an Honours Bachelor in Bioethics from the University of Toronto and a Master in Bioethics from the University of Montreal. Her dissertation examines moral challenges arising from the writing and publication of patient stories by physicians.
Research Interests: Applied Ethics, Philosophy of Medicine, Postcolonial Thought, Literature.

Ryan Hart is a medical humanities PhD student at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. His research is primarily geared toward exploring ways of narrowing the gap between medical and existential understandings of being ill. Ryan’s work draws on phenomenology, literature and medicine, depth psychology, and narrative studies.  He has a masters degree in philosophy from KU Leuven in Belgium.

I am a retired Obstetrician/Gynecologist, currently pursuing a PhD in the Medical Humanities. My main areas of interest include Reproductive Health Care Bioethics and Public Policies to affect Social Determinants of Health. My goal is to teach pre-healthcare professionals or healthcare professionals at the university or medical center levels.

Corisa joined the Medical Humanities PhD program in the fall of 2017. She received an A.A. degree at Cottey College, a BA in Philosophy and a BA in World Languages – German at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and an MS in Health Care Ethics from Creighton University. Corisa also completed a semester of study at the Philipps-Universität Marburg in Marburg, Germany. Her interests are clinical ethics, particularly pediatric ethics, and the promotion, or defining the limitations, of adolescent autonomy. Corisa is also concerned with exploring the use of animals in medicine, including their value in the process of healing. Her dissertation research focuses on the role of therapy dogs in the healing process for hospitalized patients and the ethical considerations of this kind of patient-centered care. Corisa aspires to impart an elevated awareness of therapy dogs and service dogs to the field of medical humanities.

Mike joined the Institute for the Medical Humanities as a joint JD/PhD student in 2015. He graduated from Texas State University with a BAIS in International Relations. Mike received an MPH focused on Public Health Ethics from Columbia University. Mike holds both JD and LLM (Health Law) degrees from the University of Houston Law Center and is licensed to practice law in Texas.

Mike’s work focuses on the gaps between the truths we would claim and those that actually appear to be available to us. He tries to think about ways that ethical health care and ethical health policy might feasibly be made real in a world that seems to be “after morality.” Mike’s other interests include: ethical substance use policy, the limits of justification, medical futility and clinician conscience, moral injury, ethical concerns around human life extension and aging understood as a disease, enhancement ethics, the ethics of rhetoric, the questions of whether empathy can be taught, judicial moralizing, and any/the relationship between ethics and law.