EAHMH Networks
Our goal
The EAHMH aims to foster research and the international exchange of views on all issues concerning health and medicine in Europe and their connections with the extra-European world. For this purpose, EAHMH attracts members world-wide, from North America to Australasia. Another way of accomplishing this goal is to create and facilitate networks of medical historians who have organized themselves around a particular topic.
Networks already in existence include the International Network for the History of Hospitals and the International Network for the History of Homeopathy. New networks have recently presented themselves, and the Scientific board of the EAHMH is willing to help them get started. Instruments to do this include advertising the projected network on the EAHMH website and giving seed money for an inaugural workshop where new networks can define and organize themselves.
Our existing networks
Aims
The Network exists to promote studies related to the historical evolution of hospitals from their beginnings to the present day by providing an international forum for communication and discussion among scholars interested in the subject. Particular encouragement is given to newcomers to the field. It is hoped that collaborative research among members will be encouraged.
Publications
The Network has a thriving conference and publication series. For more information see the International Network for the History of Hospitals website.
Contact
Christopher Bonfield
inhh@btinternet.com
Aims
International conferences, workshops, publications
Activities
The network has organised several international conferences, for example in Budapest in 2003 and in Stuttgart in 2007. A conference on medical pluralism and homoeopathy in India and Germany was held in Stuttgart in June/July 2011.
Contact
Dr. Marion Baschin
Institut fur Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung
Straußweg 17
D-70184 Stuttgart
Tel.:0711 46084 167
Fax:0711 46084 181
marion.baschin@igm-bosch.de
Aims
Port cities in the European past acted as ‘gateways of disease’ in the same way that airports today function as hubs for the transmission of infectious diseases such as the Ebola and the ZIKA viruses. Major port cities in the past are unique laboratories enabling us to better understand the long term global evolution of mortality and health in dynamic environments characterized by high disease loads from a large range of infectious diseases, such as cholera and smallpox, high rates of population turnover and vast economic and industrial change.
The network makes use of individual-level cause-of-death data for the entire population of European port cities for the period 1850-1950. These truly unique datasets enable us to go beyond what was captured in highly-aggregated nationally published statistics which make use of extremely limited 19th century disease classifications. In this way we can evaluate health changes in-depth, being able to study dis-aggregations, by individual disease, by age, sex, etcetera. We can thus reconstruct the epidemiological ‘fingerprints’ of European port cities and the way these changed in an exceptional period in the history of European health, in which life expectancy nearly doubled, infectious diseases sharply declined, and cancers and cardiovascular diseases increased.
The network brings together scholars in social history, historical demography, medical history and historical epidemiology.
Activities
The SHiP network has received funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) as part of its Internationalization Program 2017. For further information and contact details, see our website: Studying the history of Health in Port cities.
Contact
Prof. Dr. Martin Dinges
Institut fur Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung
Straußweg 17
D-70184 Stuttgart
Tel.:0711 46084 167
Fax:0711 46084 181
martin.dinges@igm-bosch.de
Aims
This interdisciplinary network with participants from all countries around the Baltic Sea region investigates the circulation of ideas and knowledge in medicine northern Europe. It is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Activities
So far, we have arranged two conferences (Lund 2014, Düsseldorf 2019) and presented research on EAHMH congresses. Our upcoming symposia will take place in Lund (March, 2021), Riga (August, 2021), and in Düsseldorf (March and August, 2022). The most recent network volume is Hansson N, Wistrand J. (Eds.) Explorations in Medical History in the Baltic Sea region 1850-2015. University of Rochester Press 2019.
Contact
Dr. Nils Hansson, Heinrich Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany. E-Mail: nils.hansson at hhu.de
Aims
The Quarantine Studies network has been set up to bring together historians and social scientists from across Europe and the Mediterranean with different perspectives, historiographies, and approaches to promote the study of quarantine, taken in its broader, multifaceted practices and significance. As a network of scholars we seek to motivate research in order to be able to critically re-evaluate and reinvigorate this field of study, and to present fresh theoretical perspectives. Original research which encompasses all geographical regions of the world and embracing a time frame which goes back to the Middle Ages is encouraged.
Activities
For information on past and future conferences and publications, please visit the network’s webpage: https://quarantinestudies.wordpress.com/home/
Contact
How to become a new network
New networks may apply for funding with the EAHMH by submitting a proposal to the Treasurer, Dr Nils Hansson.
The following criteria apply:
- In order to facilitate true European collaboration, networks need to be made up of EAHMH members living in at least four different European countries, including at least one from Eastern or Southern Europe
- Proposed network topics need to be innovative
- Deadlines for application are 1 May in even years and 1 January in odd years
- Applications should have a specified budget of expenses for the planned workshop, together with details of the activity
- The scheme is competitive and will be reviewed by a panel constituted from the SB
- Applicants are expected to report back to the SB after the conference, specifying how the money was spent. Information on the outcome of the workshop may be put on the EAHMH website
We consider requests for financing workshops up to 1500 euros
This funding scheme is open to all EAHMH members.