About the book

Hospitals are sensory and social spaces. Full of distinct smells, acute pain, cardboard food, incessant beeping, and endless waiting. Yet it’s the material matter, gloves, syringes, pharmacy shelves, zips, and atmosphere, that sets hospital life apart and often goes unremarked.

Anna Harris, prize-winning author of A Sensory Education and Making Sense of Medicine, has brought together collaborators from a dozen countries to study this material world through thoughtful essays, hand-drawn illustrations, and artistic photographs.

Organised from ‘A’ for atmosphere to ‘Z’ for zips, each chapter gives fresh insight into the hidden creativity, waste, patient care, community, and attention that shape hospital experience.

Open access availability

As with all our publications at Maastricht University Press, The Matter of Hospitals is freely accessible online via the DOI 10.26481/mup.2503.

The book is licensed under CC BY, supporting widespread reuse in education and research, and opening its pages to teachers, students, healthcare practitioners, and curious readers everywhere.​

Championing scholarly communication

The Matter of Hospitals showcases why diamond open access matters not just for transparency, but for stimulating scholarly dialogue and sharing knowledge without paywalls.

Institutional support allows us to publish works like this without author charges (BPC), so authors and readers benefit from barrier-free access.

The book sits at the intersection of health humanities and sensory studies, making it valuable for medicine, anthropology, and anyone interested in how the tangible and the intangible shape care.​

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