Welcome to the EAHMH 2023 conference!

The Local Organizing Committee, led by co-chairs Ageliki Lefkaditou and Anne Kveim Lie, is excited to welcome you to Oslo for the 2023 European Association for the History of Medicine and Health meeting! The conference will take place at the main university campus, Blindern, which is located on the western outskirts of the city centre.

The meeting with the theme Crisis in Health and Medicine, is a joint effort of the Institute of Health and Society (HELSAM) at the University of Oslo (UiO) and the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health. Crises are not only moments of disruption and despair, they are also moments of decisive change. As such, they invite us to reassess the multiple pasts of suffering and healing and can help us reconsider the presents that we inhabit and the futures we envision. We look forward to four stimulating and inspiring days with challenging and thought-provoking discussions in our vibrant community.

See the call for papers for more details about the theme.

We encourage all participants to attend especially to considerations of diversity in terms of discipline, geography, ethnicity, gender and career stage. The organizing committee is committed to providing a safe, open, accessible and respectful environment. If you have accessibility challenges, please contact us on eahmh23@gmail.com, so that we can put you in contact with our accommodations coordinator.

We hope you will join us in our ambition to reduce the environmental impact of our conference.

Last, but not least, we will stay true to EAHMHs spirit and create a collegial and informal atmosphere of lively dialogue.

This conference is sponsored by the Norwegian Research Council through the research project Biomedicalization From the Inside Out. The BIO project have traced interlinkages between various forms of power and knowledge production in four contested fields - transgender health, death and dying, drug use, and forensic psychiatry. We have explored boundary-making between the normal and the pathological, the increasing biomedicalization and its discontents,  and engaged with activists, patient/user groups, policymakers, researchers and clinicians.

Welcome to Oslo!

THE LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

Anne Kveim Lie (President of EAHMH, Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo)

Ageliki Lefkaditou (Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo)

Per Haave (Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo)

Christoph Gradmann (Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo)

Jon Røyne Kyllingstad (Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo)

Phil Loring (National Medical Museum / Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, Oslo)

Ketil Slagstad (Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany)

Svein Atle Skålevåg (Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen)

Tone Druglitrø (TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo)

Hilde Bondevik (Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo)

Ida Sofie Rettedal Skjæveland (Project coordinator, Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo)

Full program

Follow this link to access the conference program.

The Program Booklet and Book of Abstracts can be downloaded here as PDF files.

The Program Booklet will be given to you as hard copy in the conference bag and there is no need to print it out. If you have pre-ordered the Book of Abstracts, you will also find it in their conference bags.

Meet our fantastic 2023 keynote speakers

Rudolf Virchow Lecture: Jeremy Greene, Johns Hopkins University

Julia Irwin, University of South Florida

Britt Kramvig, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Guillaume Lachenal, Sciences Po

Thanks to our local sponsors

This conference is sponsored by the Norwegian Research Council through the research project Biomedicalization from the Inside Out (BIO). The BIO project explores the changing (and political) use of biomedical frameworks to explain nature and culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. Within this project, researchers have examined the instruments, technologies, and practices associated with (bio)medicalization. This investigation has been carried out across three empirical fields that are traditionally considered "border zones" of biomedical practice, where these processes have had particular social effect and importance: 1) the history of transgender care, 2) the history of substance use care, 3) the history of psychiatric diagnoses in the courtroom. Across these fields, the project has charted the history of the social medicine discipline, which has historically adopted a biosocial approach to health and illness. BIO is transnational and interdisciplinary, combining historical investigation with cognate fields in the medical humanities and the social sciences. The project has actively engaged with activists, patient/user groups, policymakers, researchers, and clinicians.

We are also grateful for support from UiO:Life Science, The Science Studies Colloquium and the Department of Community Medicine and Global Health at UiO.