When: 20 April - 15 June 2026 | Where: Archives Gallery, Jesus College, Cambridge
About the Exhibition
The exhibition will showcase photographs and artefacts contributed by the academic community, revealing what it means to access healthcare around the world--from jungle home visits to village barbershops to urban cafes. The exhibition will showcase inspiring stories of routine care practices across diverse conditions, cultures, and environments as well as reveal untold stories of innovation.
There is little awareness of just how different healthcare experiences can be across different settings. This lack of undestanding can contribute to universalising narratives and ineffective or colonial approaches to healthcare solutions.
Furthermore, health innovation discourse is dominated by flashy technology, like AI and robots, as if it were exclusively defined by high-priced tech. This leaves many stories untold, such as grassroots innovations that scale because of their resourcefulness and affordability. These health innovations for the masses quietly save lives everyday and often originate outside the "Global North". They don't rely on data centres or angel investors but on determined and cooperative medical teams responding creatively to a widespread need based on grounded realities. The exhibition will also highlight some of these untold stories of human-centred innovation that leverages ingenuity and available materials to meet the needs of many.
However, new technology has always had a role to play in healthcare and the exhibition includes examples of tech use across regions. While we hear a lot about how tools, like LLMs, are disrupting care in countries like the UK and US, we have less opportunity to hear about how such tools are being deployed, explored, challenged, or reshaped across the Majority of the world in places like Senegal, Argentina and Peru. How might elements of culture that are more salient in non-Western regions, such as solidarity and relationality, help us to better understand how to incoporate these tools into our lives in ways we welcome and value?
There is little awareness of just how different healthcare experiences can be across different settings. This lack of undestanding can contribute to universalising narratives and ineffective or colonial approaches to healthcare solutions.
Furthermore, health innovation discourse is dominated by flashy technology, like AI and robots, as if it were exclusively defined by high-priced tech. This leaves many stories untold, such as grassroots innovations that scale because of their resourcefulness and affordability. These health innovations for the masses quietly save lives everyday and often originate outside the "Global North". They don't rely on data centres or angel investors but on determined and cooperative medical teams responding creatively to a widespread need based on grounded realities. The exhibition will also highlight some of these untold stories of human-centred innovation that leverages ingenuity and available materials to meet the needs of many.
However, new technology has always had a role to play in healthcare and the exhibition includes examples of tech use across regions. While we hear a lot about how tools, like LLMs, are disrupting care in countries like the UK and US, we have less opportunity to hear about how such tools are being deployed, explored, challenged, or reshaped across the Majority of the world in places like Senegal, Argentina and Peru. How might elements of culture that are more salient in non-Western regions, such as solidarity and relationality, help us to better understand how to incoporate these tools into our lives in ways we welcome and value?
