We are pleased to announce the first meeting of our working group with the the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine takes place this Tuesday, 13 October at 11:00-12:30 EST/17:00-18:30 CEST. Our very own Elma Brenner (Wellcome Collection) will be presenting ‘Work in Medieval French Hospitals and Leprosaria.’

To join the working group and receive the Zoom link to the meeting, please visit: https://www.chstm.org/group/international-network-history-hospitals

We are very excited about the first entry into this year’s series exploring the theme of work in hospitals. We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday!

Abstract: While medieval European hospitals for the sick poor and leprosaria were sites of healing and palliative care, these institutions were also productive participants in local economies. The notion of work was central to the core mission of hospitals and leprosaria, since their staff and benefactors sought to fulfil the Christian works of mercy, especially tending the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and providing shelter. Within the hospital, these activities ranged from spiritual care to physically demanding labour – laundering clothing and sheets, providing personal care to disabled patients, preparing daily meals for both sick residents and staff. Yet French hospital and leprosarium statutes and archival documents from the 13^th to 15^th centuries reveal that other activities took place in spaces specifically designated for work, especially textile crafts. Reflecting also on the popularity of textile crafts in medieval French nunneries, the paper considers the function of such productive work, from generating income to providing staff and patients with a fulfilling and rehabilitative occupation. It also examines how this work contributed to discipline, regulation and control in these communities.  

The INHH is pleased to announce that the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) will be hosting our working group.

You can find our page here, which includes the seminar schedule: https://www.chstm.org/group/international-network-history-hospitals

Second Tuesday of the month beginning October 2026 

Time: 11:00-12:30 EST/16:00-17:30 GMT/17:00-18:30 CET

13 October 2026: Elma Brenner Craft-Based Knowledge in Medieval French Leprosaria: A Continuing Study

10 November 2026: Kathryn Tanaka The Fruit of Illness: Politics, Patient Labor and Poetry in Twentieth Century Japanese Leprosaria

8 December 2026: John Henderson Patience, Dedication and Hard Work: Nurses and the Care of the Sick Poor in Early Modern Italian Hospitals

12 January 2027: Reading Group: Lee-Ann Monk Attending Madness: At Work in the Australian Colonial Asylum (Rodopi, 2008)

9 February 2027: Antonio García Belmar Forms and Meanings of Work in the Fontilles Leprosarium 

9 March 2027: Anna Peterson Doing the Leg Work: Papal Legates and the Enforcement of Quia Contigit in Narbonnese Hospitals (1330s)

13 April 2027: Uğurgül Tunç Gendering Medical Labour in the Twentieth Century Across Geographies

11 May 2027: Kathleen Vongsathorn Work in Twentieth-Century Ugandan Leprosaria

8 June 2027: Reading Group: Sethina Watson, On Hospitals: Welfare, Law, and Christianity in Western Europe, 400-1320 (Oxford University Press, 2020)

13 July 2027: Lighting talks by Early Career Researchers.

Deadline: 10 June 2024

Start date: 1 September 2024

The candidate will work on ‘Spaces of Visualisation’ with Junior Professor Christine Beese. Specifically, their research will focus on the architectural and historical analysis of anatomical theatres built in Iberia and Ibero-America between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

To apply: https://jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/5d5f4174e98e9567930c481d17832880d08c82500?ref=homepage

Join the INHH in partnership with Brittany Forniotis (Duke University) and Christopher Herde (University of Wisconsin-Madison) for a rountable entitled: Hospitals Holistically: A Wide View of Hospitals and Caregiving in the Middle Ages.

The discussion includes Joana Balsa de Pinho (Universidade de Lisboa), Mary Anne Gonzales (University of Waterloo), and Sarah Guerrero (Brigham Young University).

Location: Sangren Hall 4320

Date: Thursday, 9 May at 13:30 (EST)

Deadline: 15 September 2023

The Birkbeck Medieval Seminar presents a hybrid event with our very own Prof. Carole Rawcliffe.

The seminar is on Friday, 16 June from 10:00-17:00 (GMT). There is an option to watch the event virtually. Register here.

From the website:

Friday 16 June 2023 10:00-17:00 This event is hybrid, convening at Birkbeck, 30 Russell Square, Room 101, and also online. For participants who want to listen in remotely, a Teams link will be sent prior to the event. 

The 2023 Birkbeck Medieval Seminar focuses on hygiene in the Middle Ages, considering both attitudes and practices. Contrary to popular perception, this was a subject of great interest to medieval people, who were generally much cleaner than we assume. This interdisciplinary seminar will build on recent studies which have attempted to ‘clean up’ the Middle Ages, showing that medieval Europeans developed sophisticated strategies (informed by a coherent set of beliefs about the relationship between hygiene and health) to keep themselves and their surroundings clean. It will also consider approaches to and experiences of dirtiness, including the ascetic practices of the medieval clergy and archaeological evidence of parasitic infections. ‘Hygiene and Health in the Middle Ages’ will develop our understanding of medieval personal hygiene and public health, especially as they relate to contemporary ideas about health and medicine.

Scheduled Speakers:

Dr Janna Coomans (Utrecht University)  Fire and Flow: Sanitation and Community Politics in the Low Countries, 1300-1530

Dr Katherine Harvey (Birkbeck) ‘Tortured by Vermin’: Piety and Personal Hygiene in Later Medieval Europe

Dr Piers Mitchell (University of Cambridge) Parasites and Hygiene in Medieval Europe

Prof. Carole Rawcliffe (UEA) “Travel is a fearsome thing”: Guides to health for late medieval wayfarers.

The INHH, the University of Warsaw, and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Krankenhausgeschichte (German Society for the History of Hospitals) are pleased to present our upcoming conference Hospitals in Times of Crisis. It will be held at the University of Warsaw from 18-20 May 2023.

Can’t join us in person? Watch the virtual stream.

Check out the schedule below!

Join the committee of the International Network for the History of Hospitals (INHH) for our inaugural virtual workshop. Crisis can manifest in so many ways: hospitals going bankrupt, operating in a warzone, sex scandals, etc. But this idea of crisis extends beyond our sources to how we, as researchers, approach our work from funding issues to writer’s block. Presenting on the theme of Hospitals in Crisis:

Sex, Lies, and Parchment: Reputation and Regulation at Narbonne’s Hospital of the Bourg in the Fourteenth Century

Anna M. Peterson (Independent Scholar)

Surviving Destruction: St Giles’s, Norwich, and the Crisis of the Protestant Reformation

Carole Rawcliffe (University of East Anglia)

Plague, Covid and the Historian

John Henderson (Birkbeck, University of London)

Conflicts and Hospital History in Twentieth-Century Uganda

Kathleen Vongsathorn (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville)

This first meeting will set the stage for this ongoing series. The goal of these workshops is to provide graduate, postgraduate, early career, and precarious faculty with a space to discuss their thesis, research projects, and the questions and obstacles that arise from them. Too often we have worked alone on our hospitals, but the INHH is committed to creating a space where our community can come together and inspire each other’s research.

To register for the workshop: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hospitals-in-crisis-a-virtual-research-workshop-tickets-555103167517

Follow us on Twitter @HospitalHistori or check back here for upcoming workshops.

If you would like to present your work at a future INHH workshop, please contact us at: inhistoryhospital@gmail.com

On this episode:

Between 1630 and 1631, the city of Florence suffered its last epidemic of plague. Some 12% of the city’s population of 75,000 perished.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor John Henderson, historian of epidemics, about how Florence suffered, fought and survived the impact of plague – and what we might have learned from the approach of the Florentine authorities during our own recent pandemic.

Listen below:

‘In our ninth episode, Dr. Jane Stevens Crawshaw guides our reading of Rocco Benedetti’s Accounts of some events taking place in Venice during the plague years of 1576-1577. The text is a first-hand account of one of the most devastating plague outbreaks to strike Venice in the early modern period. Its author was a notary, one of the few people allowed to move freely across the city in order to record wills and provide other services to the citizenry. His account is both informative and haunting. How did Benedetti’s work as a notary shape his views on this terrible episode of Venetian history? What did he think about the local plague hospitals’ performance and the lockdown practices ordered by the government? Find out in today’s episode!’

Listen now

Check out more episodes of Experiencing Epidemics wherever you listen to podcasts.