The development of Australian community psychiatry. This project aims to analyse recent developments in Australian psychiatry by considering their broader social, cultural, and political contexts. In the 1970s, Australian psychiatry, primarily based in mental hospital care, came under sustained critique by psychologists, psychiatrists interested in developing alternative treatment methods, and broader social movements. This project will investigate how psychiatrists, psychologists, and other men ....The development of Australian community psychiatry. This project aims to analyse recent developments in Australian psychiatry by considering their broader social, cultural, and political contexts. In the 1970s, Australian psychiatry, primarily based in mental hospital care, came under sustained critique by psychologists, psychiatrists interested in developing alternative treatment methods, and broader social movements. This project will investigate how psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals aimed to change mental hospital care and develop community psychiatry to provide alternatives. The project will examine the initiatives of the pioneers in Australian community psychiatry and its relationship to the broader deinstitutionalisation movement. The project will also analyse the resulting changes in research and practice.Read moreRead less
How infectious diseases became ecological: a global history. This project aims to investigate the conceptual history of disease ecology. During the twentieth century, infectious diseases researchers, many of them Australian, drew on animal ecology and evolutionary theory so our knowledge of how germs and parasites interact with human hosts might become more dynamic and broadly biological. The goal of this transnational historical research is to clarify the connections of animal ecology and evolu ....How infectious diseases became ecological: a global history. This project aims to investigate the conceptual history of disease ecology. During the twentieth century, infectious diseases researchers, many of them Australian, drew on animal ecology and evolutionary theory so our knowledge of how germs and parasites interact with human hosts might become more dynamic and broadly biological. The goal of this transnational historical research is to clarify the connections of animal ecology and evolutionary biology with biomedicine, and show how contemporary understandings of biosecurity and disease preparedness emerged from this conjunction.Read moreRead less
Tuberculosis in Southern Africa: the history of a pandemic. South Africa and the states which supply workers to the gold mines of Johannesburg today have the highest rates of pulmonary tuberculosis in the world. This project will explore the role of the gold mines in creating a pandemic of a disease which was not so long ago considered to be in permanent retreat.
Planetary Health Histories: Developing Concepts. This historical research project aims to explain the conceptual development of the new planetary health, the principal means of assessing impacts of climate change and global environmental degradation on human health. Using a novel combination of history of science and medicine, environmental history, international history and Indigenous studies, this research is expected to show how environmental health and disease ecology have been re-framed and ....Planetary Health Histories: Developing Concepts. This historical research project aims to explain the conceptual development of the new planetary health, the principal means of assessing impacts of climate change and global environmental degradation on human health. Using a novel combination of history of science and medicine, environmental history, international history and Indigenous studies, this research is expected to show how environmental health and disease ecology have been re-framed and scaled up in the past century to address the effects of global warming. The project will examine critically this intellectual formation, exploring its potential in global health and revealing its blind spots and omissions, especially in relation to Indigenous knowledge and structural inequalities.Read moreRead less
Pursuing Public Health in The Preindustrial World, 1100-1800. This project aims to recover community-health practices in three world regions before the takeoff of European industrialization. It challenges a common chronology and geography in public health history by examining how especially non-urban societies in Europe, the Middle East and India adjusted their behaviors and environments to manage health risks, often relying on the principles of humoral (or Galenic) medicine. A multidisciplinary ....Pursuing Public Health in The Preindustrial World, 1100-1800. This project aims to recover community-health practices in three world regions before the takeoff of European industrialization. It challenges a common chronology and geography in public health history by examining how especially non-urban societies in Europe, the Middle East and India adjusted their behaviors and environments to manage health risks, often relying on the principles of humoral (or Galenic) medicine. A multidisciplinary team will conduct spatial, material, pictorial and text-based analyses, which will collectively extricate public health from Eurocentric narratives of modernization and illuminate preventative-medical cultures often ignored or studied in isolation.Read moreRead less
Organisms and Us: How Living Things Help Us To Understand Our World. How do researchers learn from and 'think with' non-human organisms? This project seeks to develop a comprehensive historical and philosophical exploration of the changing roles and understandings of research with organisms in 20th and early 21st century science. Advances in the content and technologies of the biological and biomedical sciences have resulted in new understandings of what we can know and learn from organisms, par ....Organisms and Us: How Living Things Help Us To Understand Our World. How do researchers learn from and 'think with' non-human organisms? This project seeks to develop a comprehensive historical and philosophical exploration of the changing roles and understandings of research with organisms in 20th and early 21st century science. Advances in the content and technologies of the biological and biomedical sciences have resulted in new understandings of what we can know and learn from organisms, particularly with regard to human functioning, health, and well-being, yet we have no integrated scholarship examining these developments across a range of fields. This project seeks to produce useful scholarship relevant for humanities scholars, scientists, clinicians and policy-makers.Read moreRead less
Occupational health and social justice in South Africa. This project aims to study South African asbestos and gold miners’ political and legal struggles for social justice. It will explain how their class actions for occupational injury against employers have been possible, and explore the wider significance of the legal cases. The research will examine how disabled miners re-captured science from corporate influence and used the law in pursuing their claims. The resultant book and articles are ....Occupational health and social justice in South Africa. This project aims to study South African asbestos and gold miners’ political and legal struggles for social justice. It will explain how their class actions for occupational injury against employers have been possible, and explore the wider significance of the legal cases. The research will examine how disabled miners re-captured science from corporate influence and used the law in pursuing their claims. The resultant book and articles are expected to illuminate aspects of a regional occupational health crisis and provide evidence to improve working conditions and action for legal redress.Read moreRead less