ABOUT

(PDF) Health and Humanities (UNC Chapel Hill)
Ph.D. Science, Genomics & Repr Biology (Toronto)
M.A. Medical History and Humanities (York (UK))
H.B.Sc. Cell Biology & English Literature (Toronto)

Dr. Virlana Shchuka is an interdisciplinary studies scholar working at the intersection of the humanities, science, and medicine. She draws inspiration from the ways in which stories shape, raise concerns about and facilitate rethinking of conceptions and models of care across various health environments. Her primary, monograph-length project examines these questions in the context of experiences of preterm birth. Cultivated in her former SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Health and Humanities (HHIVE) Lab, her project turns to historical labor narratives of the long eighteenth century, making a new case for their relevance to early birth care practices today.

Her research philosophy embraces three core tenets:

i) undertaking an intellectually honest critical assessment of a subject under study;

ii) applying interdisciplinary perspectives to analyze that subject; and

iii) close-reading that subject's finer details, ones that, though often seemingly trivial at first glance, almost always, upon further investigation, unearth its complexities in new and exciting ways.

Throughout her academic journey, Dr. Shchuka has consistently sought to creatively bridge the sciences and humanities in her research (H.BSc., Cell/Molecular Biology and English Literature, University of Toronto; M.A., Medical History and Humanities, University of York (UK); and Ph.D., Science, University of Toronto). Her findings and insights have been published or are forthcoming in such peer-reviewed venues as Literature and Medicine, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Romantic-Era Women's Writing, Genes & Development, Molecular Human Reproduction, Medical History, PLoS Biology, Eighteenth-Century Life, and Genome Research. Dr. Shchuka has also held archival research visiting fellowships at the Bodleian Libraries (Oxford University); the Lewis Walpole Library (Yale University); the Wilson Library (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); and Chawton House Library.

Dr. Shchuka is exceptionally proud to have had her research supported by all three Canadian research funding agencies: the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC, Ph.D.); the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR, Ph.D., project grant co-supervisor) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC, PDF).

CURRENT AND UPCOMING

Presiding and giving a talk at the MLA 2026 conference! Session: Illness, Healing, and Relationality in Eighteenth-Century Women's Health Writing.

Check out the Chawton House Library's Youtube Channel, @ChawtonHouse, for my recent talk about an underappreciated Romantic-period writer and her proto-science fiction work!

Thrilled to have given my Health Humanities Grand Rounds talk in association with HHIVE at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill! Thanks to Professors Weed and Thrailkill for an unbelievable postdoctoral journey!

Eighteenth-Century Fiction has accepted my work on the Romantic-period role of fathers in breastfeeding ... out now in the journal's 2022 summer issue!