History of Medicine: People and projects
Get to know our endowed Hannah Chairs and other
funding recipients. Be inspired by their work.
Hannah Chairs
Through permanent endowment these eight professors teach the history of medicine in healthcare education. Learn about their exceptional backgrounds and research interests.
Dr. Darrel Manitowabi
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Alex Souchen
Weapons of mass pollution: health and environmental hazards in Canada’s munitions industry during the Second World War
This project sits at the intersection of medical, environmental, and military history. It will teach us about the history of toxicity and risk prevention related to workplace safety, medical treatments, and decontamination methods in the 1940s. During the Second World War, Canadian industries produced about 4.4 billion rounds of ammunition, 72 million artillery shells, and…
Lori Jones
Manuscripting English medical knowledge in the early age of print
My postdoctoral research focuses on how individuals, and especially medical practitioners, adapted and personalised printed medical treatises by copying these often long (and sometimes learned) texts into manuscript in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. To understand the production and use of medical knowledge in the early modern era, we must consider manuscripts and printed texts…
Matthew Wiseman
The histories of military funding and medical science in Cold War Canada
Matthew called his AMS project, “Cold Soldiers: Medical Scientist Alan C. Burton and Military Experimentation in Cold War Canada”. It examined Burton’s postwar research contributions to military science in Canada. His work for the Defence Research Board is important for medical historians because it shows the entangled histories of military funding and medical science in…
Whitney Wood
Exploring the history of natural childbirth in Canada and the world
As an AMS Postdoctoral Fellow, Whitney continued the research for her second book manuscript, tentatively titled “A New Way to Birth? Natural Childbirth in Canada and the World, 1930-2000”. She also began an oral history project to explores attitudes towards natural childbirth in twentieth century Canada.
Erin Spinney
A system of care and control: British naval medicine 1790-1815
Erin is currently finishing her PhD at the University of Saskatchewan before commencing her Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oxford in March 2018. Erin’s postdoctoral research “A System of Care and Control: British Naval Medicine 1790-1815” considers naval medicine as an interconnected system involving ships, hospital ships, and land-based hospitals. This research builds on…
Jill Campbell-Miller
Canada’s health humanitarian work in South and Southeast Asia, 1950-1968.
Jill Campbell-Miller graduated with a PhD in history at the University of Waterloo in 2014. Her dissertation, which was subsequently a top-six finalist for the CGS-Proquest Distinguished Dissertation Award in 2015, examined the history of Canadian foreign aid to India during the 1950s. It was the first sustained body of work to explore the early…
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Doctoral Completion Grants
Lucy Vorobej
“By Their Own Efforts”: First Nations Health Policy in Canada, 1945-1980
Lucy’s project examines the development and implementation of First Nations health policy during Canada’s post-war period of integration. It analyzes how the idea of race and the objectives of settler colonialism impacted debates about jurisdiction, affected the nature of health services offered to First Nations peoples, and limited the creation of meaningful partnerships with First Nations leaders.
Martin Beaulieu
The therapeutic use of cinema to treat mentally ill patients (1895-1950)
Martin Beaulieu examines the therapeutic use of cinema by the mental health professions, trying to understand why and how the cinema was considered a therapeutic tool to treat mental disorders.
Karissa Patton
Con(tra)ceptualizing care: Birth control centres, feminist models of healthcare, and reproductive politics in Southern Alberta, 1969-1979
Following the provincial implementation of medicare and the federal decriminalization of birth control in 1969, feminist birth control centres took up the provision of reproductive health services and education throughout the 1970s in the province of Alberta. Activists at these birth control centres created feminist models of healthcare and provided important health services locally and…
Project Grantees
These grantees received small budget support for projects in history of healthcare/disease and medicine.
Kristin Burnett
The Work of the Hamilton Branch of the YWCA in Indian Hospitals, Sanatoria, and Residential Schools
During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women’s philanthropic organizations made financial and in-kind contributions to Indian hospitals, sanatoria, and residential schools. Records from the Department of Indian Affairs and churches describe the arrival of clothing, bedding, medicine, and toys from women’s organizations. For large voluntary organizations, these contributions went further to include running educational…
Megan Davies
Deinstitutionalization in the Netherlands: A Memory Project
Megan’s project will help us understand how the policies and experience of the transition to community mental health in the 1980s in the Netherlands was shaped by period and place using an innovative methodology developed over the last decade by researchers at the Madness Canada/ folie Canada website.
Caroline Lieffers
“We’re just as honourable as anyone else”: Aging in Canada, 1850-Present
Caroline’s project examines the history of Canada’s aged population from around the 1850s to the present developing new ways to think about the history of aging, health policy, and geriatric medicine and nursing, but also gaining clarity into our present-day situation.
Man-Chiu Poon
Towards a Historical Evaluation of Patient-Oriented Research in Canada: how the past informs the present changing the future
It is well known that Healthcare policies, practices, and health research are intertwined. Man-Chui’s project will contribute to a better understanding of why the scientific-medical community has prioritized certain health research policies, such as the patient-oriented framework.
Peter Twohig
The Labour of Care During COVID-19: A Long-Term Care Case Study
The impact of COVID-19 on nursing home residents and workers captured global attention. Peter’s project will generate oral histories of the labour of care during COVID-19. It will preserve these experiences while examining how staff in long-term care (LTC) facilities adapted to working during the pandemic, the impact of their daily work, and their adaptations during COVID-19.
Helen Vandenberg
The History of Saskatchewan’s Early Hospitals, 1873-1920
Helen’s project will examine the history of Saskatchewan’s hospitals, before the hospital standardization movement of the 1920s when over 40 hospitals were built in the province. Analyzing the complexities of Canada’s early hospital history, and how it was shaped by region, policy, and context.
2020
Imperial pathways of mobility: doctoring women and the American surgical enterprise in Iran, 1888-1940
The University of British Columbia
History of vaccine resistance in Canada
University of Guelph
2019
How to save a life: Investigating gendering biomedical innovation
McGill University
“Illustrer le travail du coroner, du médecin légiste et de l’historien : défis et enjeux de l’histoire du geste suicidaire au Québec depuis 250 ans.”
University of Ottawa
Health and medicine in the Maritimes 1765-1830: Knowledge, networks, and practices in an age of revolution and loyalism
University of New Brunswick
Exploring ethics and Canadian clinical cancer trials, 1978-1998
Caring for the Commonwealth: Nurses, Doctors and the Colombo Plan of the 1950’s
University of New Brunswick
A short history of global/international health in the Americas: Canadian perspectives
University of Toronto
2018
Diversity of research traditions in the history of autism
University of Toronto
Life before medicare
Queen’s University
The history of the Hornby and Danman Community Health Care Society, 1978-2010
York University
False faces: Examining the cultural history of cosmetic surgery
Healing the body to save the soul: Jesuit medicine in 17th century Asia
Manuscripting English medical knowledge in the early age of print
2017
Creating a Centre for Science, Technology, Environment and Medicine Studies (C-STEMS) at the University of Calgary, AB
University of Calgary
The origins and uses of a verbal artifact in clinical medicine, 1920-2000
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Colonial extractions: Oral health, Indigenous Peoples and the federal government
University of Guelph
Childhood hand hygiene education and responsible motherhood in Canada, 1910-1979
Dalhousie University
Indigenous mental health workers and the challenges of cross-cultural psychiatry at the Sioux Lookout Zone Hospital, 1969-1996
Western University
Exploring the history of natural childbirth in Canada and the world
2016
University of New Brunswick
Queen’s University
Brock University
University of Guelph
Canada’s health humanitarian work in South and Southeast Asia, 1950-1968.
Examining interwar veterans and healthcare in Alberta
2015
Patient involvement in Canadian medical education: A historical study to inform the future
University of British Columbia
Mindfulness and emotionally healthy students in Canadian schools, 1960s to the present
St. Thomas University
Frances Oldham Kelsey, M.D., Ph. D.: From Cobble Hill to the F.D.A.
Vancouver Island University
From brains on the bench to images of mind? A critical appraisal.
University of Calgary
Exploring LSD Psychotherapy in the United States, 1949-1976
Interpreting the genetic revolution
Apply for funding
Are you doing important work in this area? Have a timely idea that needs funding? Our grants and fellowships can support your projects and help you access valuable networks.