Paul Crawford is a trained public speaker, award-winning author and a leading figure in mental health, with Fellowships of the Royal Society of Arts, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Society for Public Health. The world’s first professor of Health Humanities, which seeks to enhance people’s well-being through creative practices, he directs the Centre for Social Futures at the Institute of Mental Health, based at The University of Nottingham, UK. He has spoken on mental health and the importance of the creative arts globally to all kinds of audiences.

His new novel, The Wonders of Doctor Bent is out on 25th February 2025. It is a dark psychological thriller bringing together two unlikely companions, each suffering from their own forms of psychological trauma, in a complex tale of murder, revenge and abandonment. His first novel, Nothing Purple, Nothing Black about psychosis was acclaimed by major writers such as David Lodge, Paul Sayer, Sara Maitland and Roy Porter. It was optioned for film with British film producer Jack Emery (Breaking the Code, Little White Lies, Inquisition etc.) at Dramahouse, London.

His recent non-fiction work, Florence Nightingale at Home, won Best Achievement in The People’s Book Prize 2022. He also led What’s Up With Everyone, an animated series with Aardman (Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep etc.) to support young people’s mental health. This won Best Design and Content in the 2021 Design Week Awards, multiple categories in the 2021 PR Week Pride Awards and reached over 17m people within four months of launch alone. He is Joint Editor-in-Chief for The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Health Humanities and Commissioning Editor for two book series, Arts for Health (Emerald), and Routledge Studies in Literature and Health Humanities.

Social media and website links: X (previously Twitter): @ProfessorPaulC1 www.paulcrawfordauthor.com