Les systèmes de santé en Afrique centrale

Systèmes de santé en Afrique centrale. Dynamiques d’appropriation des politiques mondiales et enjeux de gouvernance en zone CEMAC (1945-2025)

Pierre Marie Tebeu


L'Harmattan

Date de publication : 24/09/2026

Collection : Ethique et pratique médicale

À travers une perspective historique et analytique couvrant la période de 1945 à 2025, cet ouvrage explore la transformation des systèmes de santé dans les États membres de la CEMAC (Cameroun, Centrafrique, Congo, Gabon, Guinée équatoriale, Tchad).

À l’intersection entre orientations sanitaires mondiales et réalités socio-économiques locales, l’auteur analyse les processus d’appropriation, d’adaptation et de négociation des politiques publiques de santé. Face aux crises épidémiologiques, aux contraintes financières et aux défis structurels, ce livre offre un diagnostic sans complaisance de la gouvernance sanitaire régionale. Il met en évidence les réussites, identifie les vulnérabilités et propose des orientations stratégiques pour construire des systèmes de santé résilients, équitables et souverains au service des populations d’Afrique centrale. Un outil indispensable pour chercheurs, décideurs et acteurs du développement.

Le corps féminin froid chez Oliva Sabuco

The Cold Female Body in Oliva Sabuco. Motherhood, Semen, and Milk

  

Talk by Jil Muller, Universität Paderborn

 

 Free webinar offered by the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance - CSMBR:

7 October 2026 - 5 pm (CEST) 

 

Did an early modern woman rethink the female body? Jil Muller shows how Oliva Sabuco (1562-1646) reinterpreted women's role in generation and breastfeeding by reworking the inherited traditions of Galenic, Hippocratic, and Avicennian medicine. In this lecture, she argues that Sabuco transformed the notion of the "cold" female body from a sign of weakness into a necessary condition of fertility and maternal nurture, while remaining firmly within the framework of early modern natural philosophy.

Nouvelles histoires diplomatiques de la coopération Nord-Sud en matière de santé publique

Fighting Pandemics from Below. New Diplomatic Histories of Global North-South Public Health Cooperation


Call for papers

International Conference 

Utrecht University | 30 September – 1 October 2027

Organised by the ERC COOPERATION project , in collaboration with the Quarantine Studies Network



During the COVID-19 pandemic, the inadequacy of health cooperation between the so-called global north and south had dire and lethal consequences for humanity. The rapid spread of the disease, alarming death rates and governments’ unilateral agendas led to repeated calls from health experts for collaborative action across the globe. Instead, the world has witnessed heightened geopolitical rivalries, reproduction of Orientalist binaries and vaccine inequity that deprioritize health as a global public good. Today, health practitioners and scholars across disciplines agree that building new coordination mechanisms and, by this means, strengthening the capacity of local community groups in lower-income countries is crucial to stamp out communicable diseases. While these appeals are in line with the mantra of humanitarian efforts since the World Humanitarian Summit of 2016, ‘as local as possible, as international as necessary’, there is still limited consensus as to how we can induce and sustain localised sanitary internationalism.

With these pressing issues in mind, we would like to invite historians of diplomacy, medicine, IR, empires, and other related fields to turn to the guidance of the past. The ‘Fighting Pandemics from Below’ international conference will be organized at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, on 30 September – 1 October 2027 by ERC COOPERATION project team with the support of the Quarantine Studies Network. In this conference, we will discuss histories of localised sanitary internationalism with a view to publishing an edited volume.

We define sanitary internationalism as ‘the organised, coordinated efforts of multiple international actors to confront shared health challenges and pursue collective health outcomes across borders.’ Its historiography habitually considers the fourteen international sanitary conferences (ISCs) that were held between 1851 and 1938 as the onset of sanitary internationalism. Yet, as the ERC COOPERATION project team argues, the year 1851, so often recorded as the founding moment, was in practice a moment of rupture. It disrupted a localised global north–south public health cooperation that had already taken root in the international sanitary councils of Tangier, Tunis, Alexandria, and Istanbul. By fighting pandemics from below, rather than relying on high-level intergovernmental gatherings and conventions alone, the councils obtained more concrete results at a time when the ISCs were at a loss.

The conference and the ensuing volume will build upon the postulations of the ERC COOPERATION project. We welcome proposals on the sanitary councils and the histories around them, but equally on similar moments, regimes and institutions of localised sanitary internationalism beyond the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and in other parts of the world. Rather than drawing on social histories of health alone, we would like to think together on new diplomatic histories of public health, and to ask what the preconditions were for effective or failed international health cooperation from below. We particularly look for abstracts on the long nineteenth century (c. 1780s–1940s), though papers reaching before or after are equally welcome.

Possible themes: 

• Health boards and magistrates as forms of institutionalised public health
• Sanitary councils in MENA (esp. Tangier, Tunis, Alexandria, Beirut, Smyrna/Izmir, Istanbul and Tehran) and beyond
• Cities, ports, and hinterlands as transimperial sites of public health cooperation
• The commerce-health nexus
• Sovereignty, legitimacy, and international public health
• Finances of localised sanitary internationalism: taxes and loans
• Transimperial quarantine regimes, institutions and practices
• Urban reform, sanitation, and sanitary imperialism
• Policing movement: pilgrims, passengers, and the control of contagion
• Quarantine experiences
• Women, gender and, the practice of sanitary internationalism
• Epidemiological Orientalism and Occidentalism
• Epizootics, cattle plague and livestock quarantine
• Inter-pandemics and recovery periods for pandemic preparedness

Conference format

This is an in-person event. The conference is conceived as a publication-oriented workshop: participants are required to circulate their papers in advance and engage in in-depth discussion with the work of others over the course of the two days, with a view to contributing a chapter to the edited volume.

Application and deadlines

– An abstract of no more than 350 words and a brief biographical note (max. 150 words)

– Presentation language: English

– Deadline for proposals: 30 November 2026

Notification of acceptance: 18 January 2027

Pre-circulation of papers: Two weeks before the conference

Please send your abstract and short bio in one word document to Dr Yasmine Najm (y.najm@uu.nl) and Bianca Visser (b.visser@uu.nl).

The organisers will cover travel and accommodation for accepted participants, and provide visa invitation letters on request.

Les archives hors des sentiers battus

Archives out of the Box: Innovating Methods for Critical and Creative Praxis


Call for Participants


8-9th December, University of Manchester, UK

We invite PGR and ECR applicants to our ESRC-funded methods workshop exploring critical, more-than-human, decolonial, multimodal, community-oriented approaches to archiving. Combining historical perspectives from Human Geography, Anthropology, and the Environmental Humanities, this two-day workshop will help participants translate theoretical insights into practical methodological tools and think with archives “outside of the box”.

Participants are invited to present an "archival puzzle": an object, image, absence, or contradiction that has challenged their archival journey. For instance, disruptive more-than-human agents or colonial planning failures might reveal how material conditions or marginalised actors shape social conditions but are hard to map using conventional archival practices.

How might we develop methodological practices and tools that attune us to these unaccounted-for forces, silences, and marginalised voices? How do we train ourselves to listen to and bring unruly archives to the fore?

Two themes of Archives Otherwise and Archiving as Future-Making will be explored in the workshop. The two-day event includes a keynote address by Dr Adom Philogene Heron (University of Bristol), a panel discussion with Professor Alison Browne (University of Manchester), Professor Deidre McKay (Keele University) and Dr Sally Cawood (Lancaster University) and a workshop with a local initiative to learn about community archiving centring marginalised histories. The workshop will conclude with hands-on exploration of multimodal methods to support participants in producing a zine to reflect on key themes.

How to apply: Please send us 250 words about your archival puzzle: what it is, where you encountered it, why it engaged you, and indicate some questions it brought up about silences, forces or actors. You may include up to 4 images which might show the object itself or gesture toward an absence or contradiction. We look forward to receiving your submission to archivesoutofthebox@manchester.ac.uk by 30th September and will confirm your place by 15th October.

Food is provided and includes a shared evening meal. Participants are encouraged to apply to their funder for travel and accommodation costs. We do however have a limited number of travel bursaries for applicants without funding access. Please indicate in your application if you require funding.

The event is organised by Purva Dewoolkar, Sharan Kaur, Uttara Narayan, Arianna Tozzi, at the University of Manchester.

This event is supported by the ESRC through Methods North West and the NWSSDTP.

Peset Llorca fellowships

Peset Llorca fellowships

Call for applications


The Peset Llorca fellowships are addressed to researchers in the field of the history of science, technology and medicine to develop research projects using the collections of the "Vicent Peset Llorca" Library and/or the Museum of the History of Medicine and Science of the López Piñero Interuniversity Institute at the University of Valencia (IILP-UV)


Deadline for the submission of applications: 1 October 2026

Duration: 1 or 2 weeks


Requirements: Doctorate (or advanced doctoral studies). Research on a topic with links with the research projects of the IILP or with the IILP-UV collections. The Peset Llorca researchers will present the results of their research in one of the seminars series or in teaching and dissemination activities of the IILP-UV.

Funding: Intended for accommodation expenses in the Rector Peset Hall of Residence (or similar) for a maximum period of two weeks. The amount awarded will depend on the duration, economic availability and the number of grants granted in the call.

The recipients of the grants will have a workspace at the IILP-UV, a library card (with access to the "Vicent Peset Llorca" Library and all the libraries of the University of Valencia), access to the collections of the Museum of the History of Medicine and Science of the IILP-UV, and to the electronic resources of the University of Valencia.


Instructions:

Candidates must submit:

1.- Complete curriculum vitae. 

2.- Research project (around 500-600 words), indicating its relationship with the "Vicent Peset Llorca" library, with the collections of the Museum of the History of Medicine and Science or with activities carried out at the López Piñero Interuniversity Institute.

3.- Approximate dates of the stay.

The documents (in PDF) must be submitted by email with the subject "Vicent Peset Llorca Grants" before 1 October 2026 to the following two addresses:

Ximo Guillem <Ximo.Guillem@uv.es>
María Ricós <m.carmen.ricos@uv.es>

IMPORTANT: The documentation must be sent to both email addresses.

Les chrétiens de Sogdiane

Sogdian Christians. Networks, Books, Homilies, and Medicine
 

Daniel Sheridan




Brepols
Pages: 210 p.
Size:210 x 297 mm
Illustrations:39 col., 2 tables b/w., 2 maps color
Language(s):English
Publication Year:2026

After centuries of obscurity, the Sogdian people have once again been recognized as the premier long-distance traders of the famed Eurasian trade routes of late antique and early medieval Eurasia, popularly referred to as the “Silk Roads.” Similarily, a previous Christian association with Sogdians and their language had also been all but forgotten until the archeological finds at the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, this study explores some of the results of Sogdian Christians having once moved within a confluence of networks, with connections to the wider Christian world and the transcontinental trading networks of the Sogdians. Furthermore, extant evidence shows the once wide-spread currency of the Sogdian language among Christians throughout Central Asia. Through the case studies of book culture, knowledge transmission, and the healing arts, the prominence of the “Sogdian element” in Christian activities outside of the Roman world becomes readily apparent not just for the history of Christianity but also the histories of Central Asia, China, and others.

L’éternel retour de l’hystérie

L’éternel retour de l’hystérie


Julia Legrand 



Amsterdam
Septembre 2026

« Hystérique » est désormais une blessure ; pourtant, l'usage du terme persiste dans le champ médical et psychologique. Telle est la curieuse situation dont Julia Legrand propose dans cet ouvrage d'éclairer les ressorts. Retraçant la genèse de cette catégorie et l'histoire de sa consolidation, elle montre comment le développement de son utilisation comme blessure sexiste dans le sens commun a abouti dans les années 1970 à sa suppression des classifications officielles, sans autant conduire à son abandon. En effet, les troubles borderlines et histrioniques lui ont simplement été substitués, si bien que pratique, l'étiquette demeure utilisée pour désigner une forme de « folie douce » et disqualifier la parole des femmes – quand bien elle ne serait même plus accolée de manière exclusive. Analysant ce psyque cette continuité révèle de l'état de la psychanalyse et de la la psychanalyse chiatrie, l'aune trice interroge en outre la réappropriation de la figure de l'hystérique par les mouvements féministes, d'abord comme outil de lutte contre la réduction au silence et la pathologisation de colères politiques. Elle livre ainsi une réflexion originale sur les conditions et les limites d'une démarche plébiscitée dans les milieux militants : le retournement du stigmate.

Donner la vie entre le Moyen Âge et le début de l'époque moderne

The Wonders of Childbirth. Giving Life between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period
 

Alessandra Foscati

Published 27 August 2026
Pub. Location London
Imprint Routledge
Pages 198
ISBN 9781003631934


Childbirth has long been a subject that defies easy historical investigation – elusive, painful, enveloped in modesty and mystery, and resistant to disclosure. This book outlines how childbirth was described and represented in the West from the Middle Ages through the early modern period to the seventeenth century, before the medicalisation of obstetrical practice and the emergence of clinics.

Drawing on a wide and varied body of sources – including medical, legal, religious, and literary texts – the author reconstructs the practices associated with women in labour. As the focal point of collective attention, the parturient was surrounded by other women – midwives, relatives, and neighbours – reflecting the strong female solidarity fostered by childbirth, while also being attended by men such as her husband, a priest, and, in later periods, a surgeon. Adopting a broad diachronic perspective, the book highlights both elements of long-term continuity and the most significant changes in the early modern period.

The book is intended for a wide readership, while also serving the interests of scholars and students. Beyond those concerned with the history of childbirth, midwifery and women, it will be relevant to readers engaged in the history of medicine, cultural anthropology and cultural history.