Lakshmi Krishnan

Lakshmi Krishnan, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University's School of Medicine and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of English. She serves as Founding Director of the Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative, bridging clinical practice with interdisciplinary scholarship. A board-certified Internal Medicine physician and member of the American College of Physicians, Dr. Krishnan practices inpatient medicine at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

• Johns Hopkins University - MD
• University of Oxford - DPhil (PhD) in English Literature
• University of Oxford - MA
• Wake Forest University - BA with Honors

Her research redefines medical knowledge through diagnosis and clinical reasoning, focusing on health disparities and the intersection of pandemics, artificial intelligence, and cultural narratives. She is completing a book, The Doctor and the Detective: A Cultural History of Diagnosis (forthcoming, Johns Hopkins University Press), which connects medical diagnosis to detective fiction, from 19th-century Paris to 20th-century Harlem.

Dr. Krishnan's recent publications analyze the evolution of physicians' professional identity in the digital age, the historical parallels between pandemics like the Russian Influenza and COVID-19, and the role of critical pedagogies in reshaping medical education. Her interdisciplinary work appears in The Lancet, BMJ Medical Humanities, and Annals of Internal Medicine.

• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship

As a mentor, she trains undergraduates, graduate, and medical students in humanities-centered research on pandemics, diagnosis, and cultural dimensions of clinical practice. She co-leads a multimillion-dollar Mellon Foundation grant to establish the Georgetown Howard Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice in Washington, DC.

Dr. Krishnan collaborates with teams such as the Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative, participates in research showcases, and presents at Grand Rounds, including lectures like Medical Detectives: A History of Diagnosis and the Stories Doctors Tell About Ourselves. Her advocacy for contextual medical training and health equity is featured in outlets like Nautilus Magazine and the History Channel.