Dr. DAISY FANCOURT

Daisy Fancourt. The work of Dr Daisy Fancourt has decisively contributed to prove the benefits of cultural activities for people’s health. She is Associate Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology and Head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at University College London. She studied at Oxford University and King’s College London before completing her PhD in psychoneuroimmunology at University College London. Her research focuses on the effects of social factors on health, including social deficits (e.g. loneliness and social isolation) and sociocultural assets (e.g. community engagement, arts & cultural activities, and social prescribing). Dr Daisy Fancourt is also the Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre on Arts and Health (www.artshealthcc.org) as well as a member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on cultural and behavioural insights on health.

The report “What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review”, based on the review of over 3000 studies was worldwide disseminated and acclaimed. The report and subsequent theoretical work from Dr Fancourt has shown that arts and culture combine many different components (‘active ingredients’) that are beneficial to health, for example involving the imagination, sensory activation, cognitive stimulation and social interaction. In further work published in the Lancet Psychiatry, Dr Fancourt has then shown that these components can prompt over 600 different psychological, physiological, social and behavioural mechanisms which are linked-in with the prevention, management and treatment of a range of different health conditions. Through Dr Fancourt’s publications, the beneficial impact of cultural activities has a renewed scientific evidence base. The promoting of artistic and cultural engagement at the individual, local and national levels is becoming essential in public policies for sustainable development.

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Vandana Shiva is one of the pioneering figures of ecofeminism most recognized worldwide. Born in Dehradun, India, Ms Shiva is doctor of Physical Sciences, philosopher of science, ecologist, feminist and pacifist. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy (RFSTN) in India, which she founded in 1982. She is also the founder of Navdanya, a movement focused on women and dedicated to the promotion of biological and cultural diversity. In her defence of the food cultures treasured by indigenous peoples and their cultural and natural heritage, Vandana Shiva has explicitly linked issues such as food security and climate emergency to neoliberalism, cultural relativism, and the colonization and spoliation of traditional agricultural knowledge. In this sense, she has provided keys to place culture at the core of the global debate on humanity’s challenges. She has especially helped put women and girls, and biodiversity at the forefront of the fight to implement human rights policies, the Sustainable Development Goals, and other global agendas. Her approach to ecofeminism emphasizes  scientific knowledge and dissemination as tools to preserve biodiversity and the autonomy of food cultures, and to guarantee people’s cultural rights, including the most at-risk groups, without leaving anyone or any place behind.

He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and completed a professorial thesis on Political Ethics at the University of Strasbourg, France. Until 2016, he coordinated the Interdisciplinary Institute of Ethics and Human Rights (IIEDH) at the University of Fribourg, and he currently chairs the Observatory on Diversity and Cultural Rights (an IIEDH programme established in 2004) and the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Democracy, at the same university.

He is well-known for his work in the field of cultural rights at an international scale, as the main promoter of the Fribourg Declaration on Cultural Rights (2007), the result of 20 years of work by an international group of experts, known as ‘the Fribourg Group’, which fosters cultural rights within the human rights system. Patrice Meyer-Bisch has conducted research in several European and African countries.

He has significantly influenced the understanding of cultural diversity and cultural rights as ways to achieve inclusive sustainable development for everyone and in all areas, through the effective implementation of the interdependency of human rights. In the context of these activities, cultural rights are understood, alongside economic rights as well as civil, political and social rights, as the basis, the ‘grammar’, the space for interpretation, for the development of all individuals and societies.

Sociologist and activist, she is a member of the free independent collective Colectivx Ch’ixi in Bolivia. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has been professor of Sociology at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz (UMSA), where she is now Emeritus Professor, and has been a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Columbia (New York, USA), Austin (Texas, USA), La Rábida (Huelva, Spain), Jujuy, and the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (Quito, Ecuador). Along with other intellectuals, in 1983 she founded the Andean Oral History Workshop (THOA), a self-managed group which focuses on orality, identity and the indigenous and popular social movements, particularly in the Aymara region. In the last few years she has also been involved in the setting-up of El Tambo Colectivo, a cultural centre in La Paz which aims to combine academic knowledge, manual work and environmental practices. She is the author of several books, and she has also directed fiction and documentary videos and films. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s work deals with continuity in the logic of domination of indigenous identities and cultures, including in those contexts where diversity and the value of indigenous cultures have been officially recognised.

Website (in Spanish): www.colectivachixi.blogspot.com.es

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