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 healthcare in education. Learn about their exceptional backgrounds and research interests.
Dr. Darrel Manitowabi
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Jessica Sealey
Curating the anatomical sciences: Historical perspectives and contemporary concerns in the Queen’s University anatomy lab and museum
As one of the oldest faculties of medicine in Canada, Queen’s University has a rich history of medical research and education. Today, the university possesses a state-of-the-art anatomical laboratory for the dissection of human cadavers received through their Human Body Donor Program. Adjacent to the lab is the university’s collection of wet specimens and skeletal…
Jody Hodgins
Magic bullet or threat to humanity: Antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance in animal agriculture in Canada, 1940-1990
With the widespread adoption of antibiotics after the 1940s, farmers, veterinarians, and industry leaders came to rely on antimicrobials as a cost-effective way to fight disease and promote growth in livestock. Though specialists were aware that antibiotics could have a long-term influence on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), little was done to prevent AMR from becoming one…
Derek Cameron
Experiences of the children of anti-vaccine activists in Canada, 1982-2004
This project explores the impact of anti-vaccine activism on activists’ children, c.1982-2004. Derek’s doctoral research on late twentieth-century Canadian anti-vaccine activism revealed a surprising fact: a number of anti-vaccine activists’ now-adult children had chosen to receive vaccinations in adulthood. By interviewing the adult children of anti-vaccine activists, Derek aims to understand how they adopted or resisted parental beliefs…
Kira Smith
Childhood madness: Compassionate portraits of children in Canadian insane asylums, 1880-1930
Childhood Madness is a digital exhibit about the experiences of children in Canadian asylums across five provinces. Kira’s project includes a map and timeline to develop a larger sense of time and the impact of colonialism. From there, viewers engage with province-based sections that include stories about institutionalized children. The goal of her project exhibit…
Andrea Ens
‘Healing’ through harm: Examining affect in North American conversion therapies from 1910 to 2000
Andrea’s project examines Canadian and American patients’ and survivors’ lived experiences of the harmful practice of conversion therapy through the twentieth century. It asks how secular medical practitioners utilized and manipulated patients’ emotions as therapeutic tools in clinical contexts. Her analysis focuses on how practitioners in two different national contexts understood and responded to their…
Lucy Vorobej
“Volunteers Don’t Wear Price Tags”: Compensation Discourses and the Hospital Volunteer in 20th Century Health Care
The COVID-19 pandemic is only the most recent global health crisis to highlight that even those workers who are deemed to be “essential” to health care may not all receive compensation consistent with this proclaimed value. Within this vital workforce are those who receive no compensation at all, volunteers. Despite the inclusion of “hospital volunteer”…
Doctoral Research
Alex Myrick
Infrastructures of Canadian psychiatry under the Meyerian diaspora
Alex’s project examines the proliferation and impact of new reform ideas in psychiatry developed by the Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Adolf Meyer, and the spread of his ideas by trainees who adapted his reforms both inside and outside of psychiatry in Canada throughout the twentieth century in ways that are relevant today. Scholars still do not…
Fiona L. Kenney
“More to the design than just architecture”: Practices, philosophies, and architectures of care, 1960-1995
The architectures of long-term and palliative care have resisted related typologies, like hospitals, in the same way that the hospice philosophy resists the medical desire to cure. Fiona’s dissertation explores what care, as an evolving concept, has looked like to architects in North America and the UK since the 1960’s. It considers how architecture has…
Vincent Auffrey
The history of eugenics in French Canada, 1880s-1940s
In the early 20th century, eugenics—a science concerned primarily with the “improvement of the human race” by means of selective breeding—rose to prominence in nearly every country across the globe and left a profound impact on science and society. Eugenicists theorized that many social problems could be fixed by encouraging “fit” individuals to marry and…
Emily B. Kaliel
Colonial landscapes: Public health programming, health districts, and nutrition education in Alberta, 1920s – 1960s
Emily’s dissertation studies the creation and expansion of public health programming with a focus on nutrition in Alberta from the 1920s to the 1960s, primarily in rural and northern areas. In the Prairies, where concerns of land dominated provincial concerns, public health, food, and nutrition were inextricably connected with the land. The discovery of macro-…
Jody Hodgins
Meeting Demands for Animal Healthcare: Veterinary Medicine in Rural Southern Ontario, 1862-1939
Before veterinarians populated the countryside, people had limited access to health knowledge and relied on experienced neighbours or medical doctors to practice animal healthcare. Jody’s dissertation examines the interdependence between animal, human, and environmental health to show advancements in public health and the role veterinary medicine had in shaping our current understanding of modern medicine…
Erin Gallagher-Cohoon
Queerly Familial: Canadian Histories of Queer Reproduction, Parenting, and Activism
Erin’s dissertation analyzes Canadian histories of queer parenting and queer family formations in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Drawing from psychological, legal, media, policy and oral history sources, my research questions sociocultural constructions of the categories of “family” and “parenthood.” This dissertation sits at the intersection between histories of medicine, histories of sexuality, and…
Project Grantees
These grantees received small budget support for projects in history of healthcare/disease and medicine.
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.
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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.
