Convener
Guy Geltner, Monash University
Keynote Speaker
Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University
Public health was a goal pursued by numerous societies prior to industrialised modernity. While their definitions of health and disease could differ widely, earlier communities organised themselves around promoting the former and fighting the latter with their available means. They did so, moreover, in diverse, changing and challenging locations around the world and in response to the specific risks these were thought to pose. This international and interdisciplinary conference caps off the activities of an Australian Research Council-funded project, “Pursuing Public Health in the Preindustrial World, 1100-1800” (2022-26). It aims, not only to showcase the team’s research on public health history, but also to situate it within and assess its potential impact on several fields, including environmental history, the history of science and technology, bioarchaeology, landscape archaeology, mobility studies, religious studies and gender studies.
Over the past four years, the team has worked across the regions of Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Asia, reconstructing practices meant to fight disease and promote health at the community level. Specifically, team members examined (mobile) courts, pilgrims and miners, and how they intervened in their changing environments to improve health outcomes. The choice of regions and societies allowed us, first, to venture beyond the European, urban and sedentary focus of most revisionary work on premodern public health history in the recent past; and, secondly, to critically integrate methodologies from archaeology, religious studies and other fields. Collectively these have enriched the available toolkit for detecting healthscaping activities in the deeper past.
The concluding conference will bring together the original team as well as two keynote speakers and invited scholars across several fields, periods and career stages. Presentations will explore both traditional and more recent themes converging on public health history, including biopower, the public sphere and transitions into modernity; the mingling of spiritual and physical health; the gendering of community healthcare; and the spatial and material dimensions of health.
To signify your interest, fill out following Google Form. You will be emailed once registration opens. Click here.
