Dispatches · No. 01 · Recommendation ·
The Shame Lab
Founded by Will Bynum and Luna Dolezal, The Shame Lab studies shame in professional life and teaches what it calls shame competence.
Will Bynum is a family medicine physician who practices, teaches and researches shame at Duke University School of Medicine. Luna Dolezal is a philosopher at the University of Exeter, where she leads the Shame and Medicine project. Together they lead an interdisciplinary team of researchers, scholars and trainers.
The lab’s starting point is that shame shapes how people decide and behave at work, yet it is rarely spoken about. Its research examines the nature, impact and prevalence of shame in professional settings, including medical training. Its training in shame competence — skills, principles and practices for acknowledging and engaging with shame openly — is delivered in healthcare, policing and social services.
The lab also works through creative forms. Its engagement hub, The Shame Space, uses documentary film, graphic medicine and audio storytelling, and Bynum and Dolezal co-produced “Shame in Medicine,” a ten-episode podcast series, with The Nocturnists.
Why we are sharing it
Shame is closely connected to the questions in our own work: how clinicians experience mistakes and limits, what goes unspoken in clinical life, and how care is shaped by what cannot be fixed. The Shame Lab approaches these questions through both research and the arts, and we recommend its work to anyone interested in the emotional life of healthcare.