Health, Illness and Ethnicity conference

Two-day Conference: ‘Health, Illness and Ethnicity: Migration, Discrimination and Social Dislocation’

Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland, University College Dublin, 10-11 June 2011

Organisers Catherine Cox (University College Dublin), Hilary Marland (University of Warwick) and Sarah York (University College Dublin and University of Warwick).

This two-day Wellcome Trust funded conference will focus on the relationship between illness and migration, discrimination and social dislocation. By migration, we refer to both migration between countries and internal movements of populations, for example between regions or from rural to urban areas. Our focus is primarily on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but we are also interested in exploring the relationship between historical concerns surrounding health and ethnicity and current health practice and policy. The workshop is intended to contribute to debates on the susceptibility of specific groups to medical interventions, as well as interpretations of the relationship between health and illness, migration and ethnicity, and the management of the health and illness of ethnic groups within broader health and welfare strategies. The workshop will explore the experiences of particular groups, be these ‘foreigners’, migratory peoples, patients of varied religious denominations and those suffering from particular disorders or diseases. Participants will include keynote speaker Alison Bashford, Roberta Bivins, Kat Foxhall, Alan Ingram and John Welshman. The conference will also provide the organisers with an opportunity to present on their project on ‘Madness, Migration and the Irish in Lancashire, c.1850-1921’ (funded by the Wellcome Trust). We are keen to involve a mix of early career and established scholars, historians and academics from a broad range of disciplines, policy makers and practitioners in the conference.

We request that titles and abstracts for the conference be submitted by 1 March 2011. Abstracts should be c 500 words and include a title and summary of the paper, as well as details of the address, email and telephone numbers of the speaker(s). The workshop will be held at University College Dublin. Local costs for hotel accommodation (2 nights) and meals will be covered by the organisers, but we ask participants, where possible, to cover the costs of their travel to Dublin drawing on their own institutional resources. Modest funds may be available to cover the travel costs of speakers lacking institutional support.

Please contact either Catherine Cox or Sarah York for further information.