Category Archives: Talks & events

Disability History Hackathon Friday 2 December 2022, 14:00-18:15 – please join us

Snippet from Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 264, 74v, showing a group of blind men following each other

Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 264, fol. 74v, Bodleian Library, CC BY-NC. Click to view in Digital.Bodleian.


Calling all staff and students of Oxford University
: are you interested in disability history? Do you like locating quality research materials on the internet? Please join us and a group of volunteers at the Disability History Hackathon on Friday 2 December to find resources for a guide to Disability History resources.Cartoon image of an owl wearing headphones and working on a laptop.

After brief training on advanced Google searches, you will work individually or in small groups on identifying research resources (databases, archives, websites, etc.) on an aspect of disability history of your choice. You will create brief descriptions for each resource.

We expect to spend up to 2 hours on the Hackathon with a tea / coffee break in between and a reception at the end.

You will be able to join in person in the History Faculty, George St, or remotely. All rooms are accessible. This is event is organised for staff and students of Oxford University. Spaces are limited so early booking is recommended. Register here.

What will you get out of it?

  • Discover research materials for disability history
  • Learn advanced Google search from a professional librarian
  • Network with other researchers
  • Join a community-led project to create an online guide for disability history

What do you need?

Photo of a paralysed child strapped in a walking frame and wearing splints. From R.W. Lovett, Treatment of Infantile

Robert Williamson Lovett, Treatment of Infantile Paralysis (1916) – Wellcome Collection, United Kingdom – CC BY

An interest in, knowledge of or enthusiasm in disability resources and/or disability history.

Technical requirements:

  • Remote: computer with Teams or Zoom, camera and microphone
  • Onsite: a laptop; ideally Eduroam wifi account (wifi access can be provided)
  • Recommended: headphones or earphones

More information about the day, handouts, slides, etc. will be shared with participants in advance.

Contact library.history@bodleian.ox.ac.uk if you have any questions.

HSMT Research Seminars MT 2022 – Week 2

Seminars are held on Mondays at 16:00 at the Maison Française d’Oxford in Norham Road.

Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Cora Salkovskis (Birkbeck University of London)

“We cannot help laughing”: reflex, discomfort, and the comic in late-Victorian mental science

Laughter sits uneasily within the history of mental health and the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British asylum; a space more commonly associated with pain and distress than humour and the comic. Finding, thinking about, and writing about laughter in this space and context raises important questions of methodology, meaning, ethics, and practice. How can laughter be found in asylum records or translated into text? Does laughter always neatly map onto emotion or humour, and when the doctor (or the historian) does find something funny, what does it mean to laugh?

Using the extraordinary (and newly discovered) transcribed interviews of patients in Richmond Asylum (Dublin) and contemporary medical and lay texts, this paper explores the curiosity and ambivalence with which the laughter of both doctors and patients was viewed and experienced in the physical and conceptual spaces of mental science. Laughter is explored as an expressive, disruptive, and creative phenomenon; a complex constellation of movements often ambiguously situated between reflex or automatic action, emotion, and social practice. This paper unpicks what role the familiarity and recognisability of embodied expression in how we relate to other human beings, asking why laughter is more uncomfortable or unexpected in some places than others.

HSMT Research Seminars MT 2022 – Week 1

Seminars are held on Mondays at 16:00 at the Maison Française d’Oxford in Norham Road.

Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Dr Janelle Winters (University of Oxford)

A risky business: hydroxychloroquine, global health politics, and the bureaucratization of clinical trials

The clinical trials governance landscape has evolved dramatically since the 1980s. With the wide adoption of the International Conference on Harmonization’s Good Clinical Practices (ICH-GCP) internationally, private actors have arisen to help researchers meet the demands of such “document-based accountability” mechanisms. Contract research organizations, clinical trial database and validation companies, insurance brokers, and methodology consultants have proliferated in a growing global clinical trial marketplace, as they offer the promise of global recruitment and risk mitigation.

In February 2020, just weeks after the first publications on the COVID-19 virus, the Mahidol-Oxford’s Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU)’s team discussed re-purposing the widely used anti-malarial chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. MORU researchers quickly received funding for a large, multi-country randomized controlled trial of chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine as a prophylaxis for COVID-19, the “COPCOV trial”, with results expected by the end of 2020. Yet, the trial quickly faced political fallout from “hydroxy hysteria” in the media and a fraudulent paper published in The Lancet; authorization hurdles related to ICH-GCP and other bureaucratic entanglements; and delays due to various actors’ risk aversion.

This talk draws on Dr. Winters’ ongoing postdoctoral research as the “COPCOV trial historian”. She focuses on a broad research question: What does the COPCOV experience illuminate about clinical trial political influence, “epistemic monopolies”, marketplaces, and global governance in the modern era?

Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology (Hilary Term, Week 8)

Who? The final lecture of this term will be given by Dr Andreas Winkler, who will be speaking about ‘Stars, Time, and Birth: The Temple and Astral Science in Graeco-Roman Egypt’.

What? ‘Although astronomers are attested already in the earliest written sources in Egypt from the 3rd millennium BC, the preserved sources suggest that there was an increased focus on astral knowledge in the 1st millennium BC, and particularly from ca 500 BC onwards. A similar process can be observed in Mesopotamia, particularly after the introduction of the zodiac, which also made its appearance relatively early on in Egypt. In my talk, I will discuss the introduction of the zodiac in Egypt and its impact on the culture country in a broader sense, as well as the role of the Egyptian priesthood in transferring this knowledge further afield..’

Where? History Faculty Lecture Theatre, George Street, Oxford

When? Monday 9th March 2020, 16:00.

This lecture has been organised by the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology as part of the Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology series.

All are welcome to attend!

Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology (Hilary Term, Week 7)

Who? Next week’s lecture will be given by Dr Chris Low, who will be speaking about ‘Historical and anthropological reflections on collapse and seizures among KhoeSan of southern Africa’.

What? ‘Collapse and seizures are a relatively well known component of the San healing dance. Whilst the dance is a relatively well studied phenomenon anthropologists of the dance have overwhelmingly ignored the wider context of these experiences. During this talk I will pull together seemingly diverse contexts of fits, collapse and seizures as I argue that what happens in the dance can be better understood if it is located within wider KhoeSan ontology and understanding of illness, healing, spirits and potency. My findings range from colonial records to recent anthropology and are based upon nearly twenty years of working on health and healing among the KhoeSan.’

Where? History Faculty Lecture Theatre, George Street, Oxford

When? Monday 2nd March 2020, 16:00.

This lecture has been organised by the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology as part of the Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology series.

All are welcome to attend!

Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology (Hilary Term, Week 6)

Who? Next week’s lecture will be given by Georgina Ferry, who will be speaking about ‘No lone heroes: is there a place for life stories in the history of science?’.

What? ‘Biography has been regarded with suspicion by historians, as neglecting the currents of technological change and historical contingency in favour of a focus on the individual. An alternative view is that the life history of a scientist can be told in such a way as to illustrate these larger themes, while providing a compelling narrative that offers the opportunity to reach audiences beyond the academy. I will illustrate this argument with reference to the lives of 20th century molecular biologists and Nobel prizewinners, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and Max Perutz.’

Where? History Faculty Lecture Theatre, George Street, Oxford

When? Monday 24th February 2020, 16:00.

This lecture has been organised by the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology as part of the Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology series.

All are welcome to attend!

Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology (Hilary Term, Week 5)

Who? Next week’s lecture will be given by Dr Taha Yasin Arslan, who will be speaking about ‘Astronomical instrumentation as a medium for the transmission of knowledge in the Islamic world’.

What? ‘This talk examines the role of astronomical instrumentation in the transmission of mathematical knowledge within the Islamic world between the ninth and nineteenth centuries based on two main sources: extant instruments and texts. Astronomical instruments such as astrolabes and celestial globes are important information sources for they provide details on the level of knowledge, arts, and craftmanship of its time as well as traces of long-standing instrument making traditions. The engravings, parts, and types of instruments allow us to make connections between different regions and periods. Texts on instruments are also, if not more, important on mapping the transmission of knowledge. Dissemination of certain treatises on making or using instruments made the know-how widespread in the Islamic world. These texts carry ownership records, margin notes, copying information, and other relevant data that help us trace the tradition backwards. Although mapping the transmission of scientific knowledge has its challenges, detailed examination of texts and instruments together can provide a clear route. Moreover, these studies could prove important for understanding the attitude of the Islamic world towards science between the ninth and nineteenth centuries.

Where? History Faculty Lecture Theatre, George Street, Oxford

When? Monday 17th February 2020, 16:00.

This lecture has been organised by the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology as part of the Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology series.

All are welcome to attend!

Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology (Hilary Term, Week 4)

Who? Next week’s lecture will be given by Dr Catherine Kelly, who will be speaking about ‘Medicine, Law, and the Lash: Militarized Medicine and Corporal Punishment in the Australian Colonies 1788-1850′.

What? ‘The service of medical practitioners in the early Australian colonies was inextricably bound up with a heavily militarized culture. This paper explores the relationships between those medical practitioners, legal punishment, and the British Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century. The service of medical practitioners in the Australian colonies, coming as it did so close on the heels of two generations of war, gives us an important insight into the effects of the Napoleonic wars both upon the practice of medicine in the service of the British State, and also the State’s attitude to the use of medical expertise. In the military spaces of transport and colony, the medical officer became an important lynchpin in the discipline and control exercised over convict bodies. Military medical expertise was useful to the State in understanding the best ways to discomfort and hurt convicts, without quite killing them. This expertise was further cultivated by the State in the ongoing design of the medical role in the colonies that came to hark forward to the prison officer of the later nineteenth century whose position, balanced precariously between punishment and care, has been of such interest to penologists and medical historians.

Where? History Faculty Lecture Theatre, George Street, Oxford

When? Monday 10th February 2020, 16:00.

This lecture has been organised by the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology as part of the Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology series.

All are welcome to attend!

Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology (Hilary Term, Week 3)

Who? Next week’s lecture will be given by Professor Marilyn Nicoud, who will be speaking about ‘Some aspects of patient-doctor relationships in the Middle Ages: Consilia and Regimina sanitatis, a kind of individualised medicine’.

What? ‘Historical and sociological studies have often examined patient-doctor relationships in terms of power. If today medical power is being called into question, because of legalisation of patient-practitioner relationships and because of the weight of patient associations, a lot of studies have shown that with the arrival of clinical medicine and the medicalisation of hospitals, medical discourse has imposed its power and reduced the free will of patients. This intervention proposes to examine the medieval situation and, in particular, the development of what could be interpreted as a kind of personalised medicine. It is part of a collaborative project aimed at producing a book about these relationships, studied from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. With the progressive development of a doctrine and efforts to regulate medical practice, special texts were produced from the 13th century onwards: the writing of therapeutic consilia and regimina sanitatis has resulted in an impressive number of texts, distributed by a large number of manuscripts and editions. Often written by the medical ‘elite’ for specific people, these texts propose a kind of personalised medicine, mediated by writing, that also corresponds to particular forms of relationships, which could be described as negotiated or even, in a way, contractualised.

Where? History Faculty Lecture Theatre, George Street, Oxford

When? Monday 3rd February 2020, 16:00.

This lecture has been organised by the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology as part of the Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology series.

All welcome to attend!

Humanities Research Fair 2020

The Humanities Research Fair will now be taking place on Monday 27th January 2020!

At the Fair you can learn about resources you may not yet have yet considered and meet the curators of collections who can guide you towards relevant material or useful finding tools. Over 40 stalls will cover many areas:

  • Special collections (archives & early printed books, maps, museums)
  • Topical stalls (e.g. resources for English literature, Theology, History, Modern Languages, Biography)
  • Geographical stalls (e.g. US studies, Latin American, Far & Near Eastern, European)
  • General resources (e.g. Information skills, Open Access, Digital Humanities, Top 10 Tips from a Graduate)
  • Take part in live historical printing with the Centre for the Study of the Book
  • Relax with a cup of tea at the Student Wellbeing stall and try your hand at fiendish Bodleian jigsaw puzzle

Book your place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/humanities-research-fair-registration-84117187773