New publication: "Missing Pieces: Integrating the Socialist World in Global Health History" by Dora Vargha has been published in the journal History Compass. The article is Open Access. 

On May 19, 2023 Alila Brossard Antonielli will present her PhD research at the Post-Graduate Program on Science and Technology Policy Seminar at the State University of Campinas - PPG PCT, Instituto de Geociências UNICAMP, Brazil. Her talk is titled "A aprendizagem tecnológica para fabricar medicamentos em Moçambique: das políticas farmacêuticas socialistas ao projeto de cooperação sul-sul com o Brasil" ("The technological learning for making medicines in Mozambique: from the socialist pharmaceutical policies to the Brazilian South-South Cooperation"). The seminar is organized by Prof. André Furtado (UNICAMP).

On May 12, 2023 Dora Vargha will be giving a talk titled "The end and what comes after: epidemic narratives and temporalities of disease from a historical perspective" at the Science, Ethics and Politics Day 2023, organized by the International Max Planck Research School for Infectious Diseases and Immunology.

You can find out more about the event, the speakers and the program on the link below.

CFP! 13th Genealogies of Memory 2023: Pandemics, Famines and Industrial Disasters of the 20th and 21st Centuries 

The European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) has announced a call for papers for the upcoming conference “Pandemics, Famines Industrial Disasters of the 20th and 21st Centuries”, as part of the Genealogies of Memory project. The deadline for submissions is 26th May 2023, with the conference taking place in Warsaw, 22nd-24th November 2023.

In the discussions, they would like to focus on four selected aspects of 20th-century natural and man-made disasters:

1. Epidemics: Spanish flu in East-Central Europe and other interwar and post-war epidemics of infectious diseases (e.g. polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis and AIDS) and contemporary discourses of memory and their visual and textual representations.

2. Famines – crop failures – food rationing – memory/commemoration of victims and humanitarian aid, food distribution and class/social inequalities, nationalisms/imperialism – how does the memory of famines and food crises in East-Central and Western Europe function – in grassroots (private, family) and public memory.

3. Human-induced industrial disasters – ecology – fear versus ideology of progress – modernity (industrialisation) – communist censorship versus discourses of memory – industrial disasters in people’s democracies versus practices of tabooisation (and censorship); environmental activism in East-Central Europe (especially in anti-communist opposition circles versus contemporary memory and public discussions of environmental threats).

4. Practices of constructing memory of man-made/natural disasters – changing memories, shifting agencies, human and non-human aspects of memory (as objects, industrial landscapes, etc.), 20th-century memory patterns versus the discourse of the Anthropocene, the discourse of the apocalypse and the future of memory.

However, they are also open to other approaches to the issues described above, going beyond the framework outlined here. Organizers will provide accommodation for participants. There is no conference fee. 

Conference report: Public Health in East and Southeast Europe: Growth, Inequality and the state. Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, Leibniz-Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung (IOS), Regensburg, October 13-15, 2022. The Leibniz Insitute for East and Southeast European Studies held its annual conference in October for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, featuring exciting panels from scholars across the region, and a keynote presentation from Dora Vargha.

Today, we launch our podcast “Socialist medicine” which introduces scholarship on the history of global health from a socialist perspective. In our very first episode, Mary August Brazelton, Associate Professor at Cambridge University discusses her research on Chinese public health with Luis Aue.

Alila Brossard Antonielli has joined our project as postdoctoral research fellow this month. She completed her PhD at l’EHESS in Paris, and will be pursuing research on socialist health in Mozamique and Angola as part of the Socialist Medicine Project. Find out more about Alila’s research and experience here. Welcome to the team, Alila!

April 21, 2023

CFP! 13th Genealogies of Memory 2023: Pandemics, Famines and Industrial Disasters of the 20th and 21st Centuries 

The European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) has announced a call for papers for the upcoming conference “Pandemics, Famines Industrial Disasters of the 20th and 21st Centuries”, as part of the Genealogies of Memory project. The deadline for submissions is 26th May 2023, with the conference taking place in Warsaw, 22nd-24th November 2023.

In the discussions, they would like to focus on four selected aspects of 20th-century natural and man-made disasters:

1. Epidemics: Spanish flu in East-Central Europe and other interwar and post-war epidemics of infectious diseases (e.g. polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis and AIDS) and contemporary discourses of memory and their visual and textual representations.

2. Famines – crop failures – food rationing – memory/commemoration of victims and humanitarian aid, food distribution and class/social inequalities, nationalisms/imperialism – how does the memory of famines and food crises in East-Central and Western Europe function – in grassroots (private, family) and public memory.

3. Human-induced industrial disasters – ecology – fear versus ideology of progress – modernity (industrialisation) – communist censorship versus discourses of memory – industrial disasters in people’s democracies versus practices of tabooisation (and censorship); environmental activism in East-Central Europe (especially in anti-communist opposition circles versus contemporary memory and public discussions of environmental threats).

4. Practices of constructing memory of man-made/natural disasters – changing memories, shifting agencies, human and non-human aspects of memory (as objects, industrial landscapes, etc.), 20th-century memory patterns versus the discourse of the Anthropocene, the discourse of the apocalypse and the future of memory.

However, they are also open to other approaches to the issues described above, going beyond the framework outlined here. Organizers will provide accommodation for participants. There is no conference fee.