In this seminar, Christian Bonah explores the protracted and often contentious history of the BCG vaccine against Tuberculosis, questioning the various approaches to therapeutic evaluation and human experimentation with the vaccine throughout the twentieth century.
Kevin Siena is Associate Professor at Trent University, Canada, and held an Oxford Brookes International Research Fellowship in 2011. Kevin’s research focuses on early modern British history with special interests in medical history, sex and disease, urban poverty and social welfare. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 15 February 2011
This seminar addresses the main theme of the lecture series on eugenics and maternal and child health by exploring the issue of ‘maternalism’ within the framework of the feminist and marxist historiography which gave rise to this field of enquiry in the first place. And it explores the topic within the context of Italian fascism’s contradictory attempts in the 1920s and 1930s both to increase the ‘quantity’ (numbers) and improve the ‘quality’ (biology) of the Italian ‘race’. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 2 October 2012
In this seminar Paul Weindling, Director of Brookes’ Centre for Health, Medicine and Society, discusses the ever-changing and evolving roles of historians of medicine as seen through the prism of his work on medical research and experimentation conducted by the Third Reich. In particular, Paul detailed the various ethical pitfalls surrounding the use of data gathered under such circumstances, as well as the emotive debates surrounding the naming and memorialising of the individual victims and their specific life histories. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 6 December 2011
In the larger context of arguing for recasting the twentieth century as ‘the century of woman’, this seminar seeks to highlight the role eugenics played in relationship to maternalism as an example of women’s integration in state making and modernization policies. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 16 October 2012
In this seminar Claudia Stein, Director of the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Warwick, offers her fascinating insights into the life and work of Karl Sudhoff and his lasting import on the establishment of the history of medicine as an academic field along with that of his successor Karl Sigerist. The seminar also detailed the seminal but often neglected 1911 International Hygiene Exhibit in Dresden organised by Karl Lingner, discussing its relevance as a microcosm of the various perceptions of, and approaches to, public health and medicine. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University
This seminar focuses on Greek child welfare institutions and initiatives in from the early 20thcentury unto 1940, exploring the combination of eugenics and ‘puericulture’ that emerged, as well the social hygienic measures adopted by Greek governments towards improving children’s health. This seminar hence also investigates the contributions pediatricians made to the wider eugenic discourse during the interwar years along with the intellectual currents that framed these debates and policies. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 5 April 2011
This seminar offers a fascinating and wideranging discussion of the history of morphological evolution conceptually a nd empirically, with a marked emphasis on scientific methodologies and the extent to which genetic manipulation can alter the shape and appearance of specimens – such as the Drosophila mutant with legs for antenna. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 27 March 2012
In this Seminar, Georgia Buttina Watson offers a range of remarkable insights into how urban planning and regeneration can dramatically affect not only the local population‘s sense of self, a geographic and collective identity, but also the wider impact living condition have upon the communities' physical and mental health. A richly illustrated seminar, it investigated, amongst others, Boston’s ‘Big Dig’ redevelopment alongside her own projects such as that in Angeltown and those currently underway in Oxford. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 17 April 2012
In this seminar Florence Binard explores the dichotomy of ‘eugenic feminists’ in contrast to ‘feminist eugenics’ by focusing primarily on authors of the former group that understood themselves as both feminists as well as eugenicists. Binard critically investigates the works of Edith Ellis, Mary Sharlieb, Frances Swiney, Elizabeth Sloan Chester, and Caleb Saleeby towards illuminating the extent to which debates on reproduction and feminism related to the social construction of childless women and changing perceptions of their wider societal functions. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 27 November 2012.