Symposium - Putting the History into Health Humanities - In person and Online, 13 Nov 2026 9.30am-5pm, Deakin Downtown, Melbourne
Deakin Science and Society Network (SSN) present a fee-free symposium on medicine, ethics and history in the humanities
History has much to offer the health humanities, illuminating how medicine, care, and public health have been shaped by the societies that produced them. Colleagues across fields and the public are invited to join the SSN and leading researchers for a symposium that traces these histories across a full day of interdisciplinary papers. Keynotes from Professor Gayathri Prabhu and Professor Nikhil Govind, from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India, span gender, race and medicine in colonial India, and bioethics and end-of-life care debates in Indian law, alongside papers on dementia and aged care in literature, hepatitis C treatment barriers, the cultural history of the vagus nerve, autism diagnosis, American psychotherapy, obstetric violence in British medicine, and the history of tobacco and gambling advertising regulation.
