Iain Bamforth has strong interdisciplinary interests at the intersection of clinical medicine and public health on the one side and philosophy, language and literary studies on the other. A trained general practitioner, his medical experience has included being chief resident at the American Hospital of Paris, casualty officer in a base hospital in the Australian outback, running a solo practice in urban France and working as a freelance primary health care and public health consultant on EC-funded health projects in Asia.
His publications include five volumes of poetry, an anthology of writings about modern medicine The Body in the Library, a collection of essays on modern European writers and philosophers The Good European, and many articles on contemporary European literature, medicine, intercultural dealings and the history of ideas. He contributes a regular column Catchwords to PN Review on language, culture and ideas, reviews for several journals including London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement and Quadrant, and for many years edited a medicine and literature feature in the December issue of the British Journal of General Practice.
Dr. Bamforth was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters in 2009 by Glasgow University for his writings on medicine and the imagination; his poetry has received an Eric Gregory Award and Scottish Arts Council Book Award. He currently lives in Strasbourg on the French side of the Rhine but within hailing distance of Germany; and since 2005 has ventured regularly to the other side of the globe to work as a consultant on health projects, notably in Indonesia and the Philippines. He has recently completed a new and distinctive book of writings on medicine and culture, A Doctor’s Dictionary, to be published in August 2015.
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