La santé sexuelle

Sexual Health: Past, Present and Future


Call for Papers


University of Birmingham

2–3 July 2025



In July 2025, the project team for Histories of Sexual Health in Britain are hosting a multidisciplinary workshop exploring the UK’s sexual health across different geographical regions and time periods.

The prevention, treatment and control of sexually transmissible infections, including HIV, has a complex history. It has been the catalyst for significant developments in medicine and public health. But it has also been an uncomfortable subject, existing on the margins of respectability and for many decades occupying a grey area between quackery and reputable medicine. Sexual health was bound up with fears of social disorder, at times seen as a ‘racial poison’ and a threat to colonial, state and military power. It was used as an excuse to experiment on vulnerable people, impose draconian legislation and persecute minoritised and marginalised communities.

Yet even with such a turbulent history, it is no exaggeration to say that sexual health now faces one of its greatest crises. Rates of syphilis are at their highest since 1948 and there are more cases of gonorrhoea than at any other point since records began. Barriers to PrEP uptake persist. While RSE has improved, significant shortcomings remain. The impact of mental health, poverty and domestic violence on sexual-health outcomes are not adequately addressed. Services decimated by disinvestment by successive governments are no longer accessible to many who desperately need them. And a lack of culturally competent, inclusive provision means that many service users feel alienated by the services that remain available. All of this is exacerbating deep inequalities in health outcomes and wellbeing.

Our workshop will be an opportunity for researchers, activists and health professionals to come together to explore the complex challenges facing sexual health today and in the future, as well as the ongoing historical legacies shaping those challenges.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers that address any historical, contemporary or future aspect of sexual health in the UK. This might include:

• Sexual health among different groups and communities
• How we interpret the experiences of service users
• The barriers to accessing sexual health services
• The barriers to recruiting graduates to work in sexual health
• What the experiences of service users might tell us about past, present and future interactions between health consumers and providers
• How sexual health provisions have developed in different regions and time periods
• How we might develop sexual health provisions that are accessible and culturally competent
• RSE provision
• Sexual health activism and promotion, both historically and today
• Future challenges facing sexual health
• The potential of cross-disciplinary collaborations to support and improve sexual health

Proposals should not exceed 250 words and should be accompanied by a short biography. Please submit proposals to Dr Anne Hanley (a.hanley@bham.ac.uk) and Dr Claire Martin (c.martin.6@bham.ac.uk) by Friday 14 February 2025.

Contact Information

Please send any questions and proposals to Dr Anne Hanley (a.hanley@bham.ac.uk) and Dr Claire Martin (c.martin.6@bham.ac.uk).

URL
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/applied-health/research/ssim/research/his…

Attachments

cfp-sexual-health-workshop.docx

La prochaine séance de la Société Française d’Histoire de la Médecine

La prochaine séance de la Société Française d’Histoire de la Médecine 

 

Vendredi 21 FEVRIER 2025 à 14 heures
à l’Académie Nationale de Médecine, 16 rue Bonaparte 75006 Paris. Salle du 3e étage.

Conférence invitée (60 min)

Andréa BARBE-HULMANN
Le Musée d'Histoire de la Médecine : un musée de l'Université Paris Cité

Communications (20 min)

Jacques BATTIN
La médecine au grand siècle d’après la correspondance de la marquise de Sévigné
 

Benoît VESSELLE
Mise au point : La durée d’une amputation à l’époque de la Révolution et de l’Empire

 

Quelle histoire pour la santé mentale ?

Quelle histoire pour la santé mentale ?

Conférence débat organisée par le Comité d’Histoire des Administrations chargées de la santé (CHAS)

20 mars 2025, 18h-20h00

Amphithéâtre du Siège de l’AP-HP (hôpital Saint-Antoine) – Paris

(184, rue du Fbg Saint-Antoine 75571 Paris (métro reuilly diderot ou Faidherbe Chaligny



Conférence d’Hervé Guillemain, professeur d’histoire contemporaine, spécialiste de la santé mentale, membre de la commission scientifique du CHAS.

Table-ronde, réunissant un administrateur, un médecin, une responsable de fonds patrimoniaux et une historienne sur les chantiers présents et à venir en la matière, animée par Ph. Artières (historien, directeur de recherche au CNRS, membre de la commission scientifique du CHAS) et Hélène Servant (conservateur du patrimoine, présidente de la Commission scientifique du CHAS). Les participants à la table ronde sont : - M. Frank Bellivier, délégué interministériel à la santé mentale et à la psychiatrie ou son représentant (sous réserve) ; - Dr Camille Lharent, psychiatre (hôpital Bichat) ; - Dr Anne-Marie Dubois, responsable scientifique et vice-présidente du Musée d’art et d’histoire de l’hôpital Sainte-Anne ; - Agathe Méridjen, doctorante en sociologie et archiviste, ayant classé le fonds de l’hôpital Saint-Maurice à Charenton et co-autrice de l’exposition dédiée, présentée aux Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne jusqu’en juin 2025

Le CHAS publie une lettre d’information trimestrielle. Pour vous abonner, envoyez votre message à comite-histoire@sante.gouv.fr en précisant dans l’objet du message "abonnement à la lettre d’information".


 

Dossiers individuels et trajectoires de papier

Dossiers individuels et trajectoires de papier

Journée d'études



La prochaine journée du cycle Pratiques et usages des archives médicales aux Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne aura lieu le vendredi 14 février de 9h à 17h autour des Dossiers individuels et trajectoires de papier.


Interventions prévues : Écouter les silences : paroles de femmes enfermées, Anne Baptiste-Voisin (ECPAD).

Aperçu des archives médicales conservées pour les hôpitaux bruxellois (XIXe-XXe s.), David Guilardian (ULB, CPAS). 

Les observations individuelles des patients du docteur Henri Baruk, Marie Derrien (IRHiS).
De Fresnes à Nanterre, itinéraires de détenus ?, Juliette Gallois (AD92) et Agnès Seguin (AD94).

(pause déjeuner) 

Visite de l’exposition Aux sources de la psychiatrie, Elodie Belkoff (AD94).

La consommation d’amphétamines légales à travers les dossiers de patient.es en psychiatrie (années 1940-1950), Paul Boulland (CHS).

Histoire des archives de l'ASE, administration et traces, Antoine Ruault (AD94) ; Collecte et classement des dossiers d'enfants placés, Sylvie Mercieca (AD94) ; Consultation des dossiers ASE, Patricia Paumier (DPEJ 94). 

Les dossiers des enfants juifs recueillis par le service des Enfants assistés de la Seine sous l'Occupation, des années 1940 à nos jour, Antoine Rivière (IHTP).

Médicalisation de la maternité et de la garde des enfants dans les contextes coloniaux et postcoloniaux

How to be a mother? Medicalization of motherhood and childcare in colonial and postcolonial contexts

Call for papers
 

EAHMH 2025 Health Beyond Medicine Conference Panel

Taking off in the metropoles at the beginning of the twentieth century, the medicalization of childbirth was slowly transferred to colonial settings in the interwar period. Colonial governments, missionaries, and charitable organizations tried to change not only the ways in which women gave birth but also how they behaved during pregnancy, raised their children, and understood their role as wives and mothers. Education of girls and women, therefore, primarily focused on suppressing local midwifery practices, promoting hospitalized birth, and teaching women new ways of child-rearing, nutrition, and hygiene. However, it also served to construct gender identities and universalize the role of women within the state and family. The responses of local communities varied, and resistance and acceptance of new ideas and practices usually went hand in hand. Many of those ideas persisted well into the postcolonial period albeit often with particular local characteristics.
This panel explores the changing ideas and practices around motherhood and childcare, and how they constructed gender roles and influenced women’s lives in colonial and postcolonial settings. It welcomes papers that address the following topics:

The developments around maternal and child healthcare, and education of women and girls in domestic roles.

The transnational nature of those developments, and the role of governments, missionaries, and NGOs in promoting new practices in childbirth, child-rearing, nutrition, and hygiene.

The responses of local communities to these developments, and how they influenced women’s roles within the family and society.
Organizer: Ivana Zečević, University of Groningen
Deadline for abstracts: 23rd February 2025.
Notifications for accepted/rejected abstracts: 1st of March 2025.
Deadline for the panel submission: 10th of March 2025.
Conference website: https://hi.converia.de/frontend/index.php?folder_id=564&page_id=
Please send your abstracts to i.zecevic@rug.nl. Proposals should not exceed 300 words.

La longue durée de l’assainissement

The Longue Durée of Sanitation: Changing Knowledge, Management and Infrastructures in Urban Europe and the Mediterranean, 1500-1900

Call for chapters

Editors: David Gentilcore and Salvatore Valenti (Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice)

Publisher: Bloomsbury



We invite chapter proposals from a wide range of disciplines interested in the study of sanitary practices, forms of knowledge, and infrastructure in the European and Mediterranean past (1500-1900). Contributions are welcomed from the history of science and medicine, social and cultural history, urban history, rural history, gender history, engineering history, environmental history, and archaeology, employing a wide range of source materials (archival, print, literary, artistic) and approaches and methodologies. Contributions which encompass the southern and eastern Mediterranean regions are particularly encouraged.

The Longue Durée of Sanitation explores the evolution of knowledge, practices and infrastructure in European and Mediterranean cities during the early- and late-modern periods, taking as its starting point the fact that combined sewers are the product of historical contingencies, and not some ambiguous, unmeasurable stage of civilisation. It analyses the knowledge of architects, engineers and related professions regarding the problem of human waste management, the social perception of faeces and sensory experience, over the extended period. It also examines nineteenth-century debates among various professionals, primarily engineers and physicians, regarding the methods of addressing urban sanitation issues, the transfer of knowledge from Western Europe to different regions, and how perceptions of dirt and social worth were utilised to design urban spaces in conjunction with the expansion of Western capitalism.

We take the perspective of Science and Technology Studies that technology is never neutral, but that cultural and social values are woven into it. Sanitary infrastructures are a complex assemblage of heterogeneous elements such as politics, power, capital, technology, culture and everyday practices. They contribute to the creation of a geography of privileged areas and social groups whilst marginalising others. Social conflicts, material interests and constraints, and the adaptation of pre-existing infrastructures are often obscured by the nineteenth-century discourse of improvement and progress associated with sanitary infrastructures, as carriers of a better society, which was part of their cultural value.

The longue durée approach helps to avoid misinterpreting the history of sanitation and losing sight of the connections between the early- and late-modern periods. These connections and long-term continuities in habits and attitudes towards urban sanitation were more significant than nineteenth century sanitarians openly admitted, with their rhetoric of progress. In particular, the relative absence or weakness of State regulations in early modern times did not result in the occurrence of irresponsible and irrational individual behaviour.

In order to provide an convincing account of sanitation practices in early- and late-modern cities, the book considers the multiple actors involved in the processes of keeping the urban environment healthy according to the standards of each society.



Suggested topics for chapters include, but are not limited to, the following: Sensory experience
Scientific, and vernacular knowledge
Material objects
Racial and gender differences
Environmental quality (perception and assessment)
Professions
The economy of waste
Management models (centralised, shared)
Infrastructure (urban, periurban and rural)



Scholars working in these fields are encouraged to submit a detailed chapter proposal of between 1,000 to 2,000 words via email to salvatore.valenti@unive.it. In the proposal, the topic of the proposed chapter and how it contrinutes to the themes of book should be clearly outlined.

The deadline for chapter proposals is 14 March 2025. Acceptance of the proposals will be communicated by the end of March, along with the style guidelines of the publisher of the volume, which is Bloomsbury.

Once accepted, the full chapter, which should be approximately 9,500 words in length (including references), is to be submitted by 31 May 2025.

All enquiries may be directed to Dr Salvatore Valenti at salvatore.valenti@unive.it.

Contact Information

All enquiries should be directed to Dr Salvatore Valenti at salvatore.valenti@unive.it.

Contact Email
salvatore.valenti@unive.it

URL
https://www.unive.it/data/persone/25242426

Soigner les Anglais de la peste à Peterloo

Nursing the English from plague to Peterloo, 1660-1820 
 

Alannah Tomkins

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Manchester University Press (January 21, 2025)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1526178524
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1526178527

This book studies the negative stereotypes around the women who worked as sick nurses in this period and contrasts them with the lived experience of both domestic and institutional nursing staff. Furthermore, it integrates nursing by men into the broader history of care as a constant if little-recognised presence. It finds that women and men undertook caring work to the best of their ability, and often performed well, despite multiple threats to nurse reputations on the grounds of gender norms and social status. Chapters consider nursing in the home, in general hospitals, in specialist institutions like the Royal Chelsea Hospital and asylums, plus during wartime, illuminated by multiple accounts of individual nurses. In these settings, it employs the sociological concept of ‘dirty work’ to contextualise the challenges to nurses and nursing identities.

Tommy Douglas et la quête de l'assurance-maladie au Canada

Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada

Gregory Marchildon

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Toronto Press (January 5, 2025)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 728 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1487560430


How and why was universal health coverage implemented so early in a poverty-stricken province in Canada? Why was its design so faithfully replicated in the national standards that ultimately shaped Medicare across the rest of Canada?


Seeking to answer these questions, Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada explores the history of universal health care through the life of Canadian politician Tommy Douglas, identifying the pivotal moments and decisions that led to the establishment of Medicare in Canada.


The book traces the origins of Medicare back to the 1930s Depression and its devastating impact on the Prairie populations. Marchildon examines how Tommy Douglas and a new generation of reformers, radicalized by the Depression, prioritized socialized health care. The book reveals how, as the provincial party leader, Douglas leveraged support from both local and external allies to rapidly implement universal hospital insurance and lay the groundwork for a new health system.


Despite strong opposition from physician and business lobbies, Douglas continued to pressure the government for federal cost-sharing of universal health coverage. Drawing on archival sources including speeches, television broadcasts, and cabinet documents, Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada illuminates how Douglas’s vision, leadership, and coalition-building among unions were crucial to the successful establishment of Medicare in Canada.