Les substances psychoactives dans l'Histoire

Changing Minds: Societies, States, the Sciences and Psychoactive Substances in History

Call for Papers

Shanghai University
13-16 June 2019

The 2019 Alcohol and Drugs in History Society conference takes its cue from recent shifts in attitudes towards, and understandings of, intoxicants and psychoactive substances to explore the drivers of change throughout history in ideas about, and actions on, such materials.

Over the last two decades or so physiological models of drug and alcohol use have claimed to provide definitive accounts of the actions of these substances on human bodies, and how they function to literally change our minds. In much the same period ideas about certain substances, from alcohol to cannabis, have begun to fundamentally shift and with this has come political change as many consumers, scientists, doctors and policy-makers change their minds, even as others refuse to do so. The conference stops to ask 'haven't we seen this all before'?

After all, experts offering definitive accounts of such substances, vacillating bureaucrats and politicians, unyielding moralists and fickle consumers are all among the figures familiar to historians from other periods and a range of places. The conference brings together those working in the field to examine the latest research into why ideas, attitudes and approaches towards intoxication and psychoactive substances have changed in historical contexts, and why they have not. It will also establish how far these historical understandings can provide a clearer sense of just what lies behind practices, perceptions and policies today.

Where and When
For the first time the ADHS will host its conference in Asia, at Shanghai University in China, one hundred and ten years after the Opium Commission in the city that did so much to shape future control regimes. The event will also mark the centenary of the Treaty of Versailles which saw the establishment of the first permanent international mechanisms for monitoring and making policy on psychoactive and intoxicating substances at the new League of Nations. The David F. Musto Center for Drugs and National Security Studies at Shanghai University, in partnership with the ADHS and the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare (CSHHH) Glasgow at the University of Strathclyde, looks forward to welcoming all those conducting research on any aspects of the consumption or control of alcohol or drugs in the past, anywhere in the world.

The event will take place between 13 and 16 June 2019.

Call for Papers
For individual papers please submit a one-page cv, a title and an abstract of no more than 200 words.

For panel proposals please provide a panel title and a list of four participants, together with a one-page cv, a title and an abstract of no more than 200 words for each participant.

The deadline for proposals is Monday, 5 November 2018.

These should be submitted to caroline.marley@strath.ac.uk