Bookings close on Tuesday, 21 Oct 2025 (For the Lecture & Supper)
Bookings close on Monday, 27 Sep 2025 (For the Lecture & Drink)

Date: Tuesday, 28 Oct 2025
Time: 6.30 pm
Location: Apothecaries’ Hall
Who can attend: Open to all

Members’ Portal (LMS): Click here to book
Price: Lecture & Drinks £15.00 / Lecture & Supper £55.00

Non-Members: Click here to book
Price: Lecture & Drinks £20.00 / Lecture & Supper £60.00

Dress code:  Casual

Contact: AcademicEvents@apothecaries.org

Presenting The algorithm will see you now (John Locke Lecture)

To be given by Dr Rupal Shah

The evening (loosely inspired by Arundhati Roy’s Capitalism: a Ghost Story) explores two key ways (silencing and system-driven medicine, in which people, their narratives and values are lost in large healthcare systems. We will consider how, as individuals, as professionals and as society we can respond to the challenge of epistemic injustice in 21st century healthcare.
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Presenting Unheard: On medical silencing (Sydenham Lecture)

To be given by Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan

When Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan was admitted to hospital as a patient she didn’t receive the pain medication that she told them she needed, despite her being a senior doctor. It was in that moment she understood that something was deeply wrong with our healthcare system – medical silencing is pervasive and hindering patient safety and health equity.
In Unheard, Dr Dhairyawan takes us on a journey through history to show how silencing patients has been ingrained in medicine from its inception. Western medicine has been built on the assumption that power should always lie with the doctor, and that patients should be powerless to decisions made about their body if it is done to make them well. This, alongside the prejudices of society, has led to dramatic gaps in medical knowledge because for centuries people have not been heard.

Dr Dhairyawan offers a way to reshape our health system for a future where active and engaged listening is the new frontier.

Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan is an NHS Consultant in Sexual Health and HIV Medicine at Barts Health NHS Trust and Deputy Director of the SHARE Collaborative, Queen Mary University of London. Her clinical work, research and advocacy focus on improving health equity, Rageshri has held numerous national charity and policy positions and regularly works with patient organisations. She was named as a ‘Woman Changing the World’ on International Women’s Day in 2019 by iNews. Rageshri is the author of Unheard: The Medical Practice of Silencing (Trapeze, 2024) and has contributed an essay to the anthology No One Talks About This Stuff (Unbound, 2024).