Deakin Science and Society Network Health humanities scholarship increasingly draws on history to understand how ideas of illness, care, and wellbeing are produced as outcomes of particular social, political and cultural conditions. This symposium brings together historians, literary scholars, and clinical researchers to explore how historical methods can deepen our understanding of contemporary health challenges, from mental illness and disability to reproductive care and public health regulation.
Spanning colonial India, twentieth-century Australia, and contemporary bioethics debates, the day's papers ask what is gained when health humanities puts history back into the frame, and what historical perspectives can offer researchers, clinicians, policymakers and communities working on today's most pressing health questions.
This is a fee-free symposium, with morning/afternoon teas and lunch for those attending in person at Deakin.