Planetary Health beyond Spaceship Earth? - Warwick Anderson
2026-03-02 17:30 - 18:30 UTC | Carslaw Building Lecture Theatre 275, Carslaw Building (F07), Level 2, Room 275, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia
Abstract
For more than ten years, concern about the impacts on human health of degradation of the earth’s life-support systems has been expressed in terms of ‘planetary health’. The current and future effects of climate change on health and well-being thus come under the rubric of planetary health. We realise now that the health of all species depends on ecosystem health, now scaled up to encompass the planet. But what ideas shaped this understanding of our dependence on the planet as a semi-closed feedback system? Many of the concepts of planetary health – including ‘life-support systems’, ‘safe operating systems,’ and even ‘planetary boundaries’ – derive from 1960s systems theories and cybernetics, as developed in the NASA space program. Planetary health is still largely confined by our sense of living on spaceship earth. How might we come to imagine planetary health otherwise, beyond the limits of a closed system?
Bio
Warwick Anderson is Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance and Ethics in the Discipline of Anthropology and the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. He was formerly an ARC Laureate Fellow in the History Department at Sydney. A co-conspirator in postcolonial studies of science, he has written extensively on science, race, and colonialism; medicine and white masculinity; kuru, cannibalism, and sorcerer scientists; and autoimmunity and tolerance of self. His current research is focused on disease ecology and planetary health. In 2023, he was awarded the John Desmond Bernal Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science, in recognition of lifetime achievement in science and technology studies. In 2025, he received the Arthur J. Viseltear Prize for lifetime achievement in public health history from the American Public Health Association.

Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South
2026-03-09 17:30 - 18:30 | Carslaw Building 450, Carslaw Building (F07), Level 4, Room 450, The University of Sydney, New South Wales, 2006, Australia
Abstract: “Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South” documents the impact of racial segregation and the fight for medical civil rights in the state psychiatric hospitals in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi between 1948 and 1972. Drawing on extensive archival and legal records, as well as first-hand accounts, Kylie Smith explores the ways that local Black communities and families negotiated mental health care in the context of white supremacy and fought for their rights as citizens. By placing the history of these hospitals in the context of the Civil Rights movement, the book adds to both the history of psychiatry and the history of Civil Rights, demonstrating the multiple terrains on which activists fought to end segregation. In doing so, Smith argues that psychiatry itself was deeply entwined with the Southern racial project, and that Black patients were particularly vulnerable to populist politics. This combination of political expediency and scientific racism created hospitals which operated as little more than prisons in the wake of the plantation, and laid the foundation for racist approaches to mental health care today.
Bio: Dr. Kylie Smith was until recently Associate Professor in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and Associate Faculty in the Department of History at Emory University in Atlanta. While in the US, Kylie taught courses on race and health in US history and authored two monographs in the history of psychiatry.
Her first book, Talking Therapy: Knowledge and Power in American Psychiatric Nursing, published by Rutgers University Press in 2020, won the Lavinia L. Dock Award from the American Association for the History of Nursing and the American Journal of Nursing’s Book of the Year Award in the area of History and Public Policy.
Her new book, Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South was published by the University of North Carolina Press in January 2026. Initial research for the book was supported by the National Library of Medicine (NIH) G13 Grant, and thanks to a grant from the Mellon Foundation’s Digital Publishing in the Humanities program, the book has been released in print, as a free downloadable E-book, and an Open Access Digitally enhanced monograph on the Manifold Scholar platform.
In between monographs, Kylie co-edited, with Courtney Thompson, the collection “Do Less Harm: Ethical Questions for Health Historians”. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2025, the book contains 28 essays on the challenges of developing an ethics of care for historical work at the intersection of health, medicine, and justice.
Kylie received her PhD (a study of history of juvenile delinquency in Australia) from the University of Wollongong and has returned to Australia to continue her work on a history of forensic psychiatry and juvenile detention in colonial regimes.

Colonization Resistance and the Gut Microbiota ca 1960-1990: Persistence of an Ecological Paradigm in Medical Microbiology - Nicolas Ramussen (UNSW)
2026-03-23 17:30 - 18:30 | Carslaw Building Lecture Theatre 275, Carslaw Building (F07), Level 2, Room 275, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia
Abstract: In the 1950s an alarming response to technocratic medicine emerged: patients were suffering severe, often fatal gut infections as a result of antibiotic treatment. This talk describes how in the 1960s-1970s, research into the problem revealed that the indigenous microbial flora of the gut play a major role in protection from disease, and thus established one of the foundations of microbiome science. It also relates the ideas guiding these postwar investigations to much earlier microbiological thought dating to the turn of the 20th century, and explores the relationship of this research field to the politics of the long 1960s.

Bio: Nic Rasmussen is Professor Emeritus of history of science at UNSW, and presently serving as Chief Editor of Journal of the History of Biology. His research interests include the Cold War and the rise of molecular biology, pharmaceutical development and its relationship with nonmedical drug use, and the influence of commercial sponsorship on biomedical research. Publications have included Picture Control: The Electron Microscope and the Transformation of Biology in America, 1940-1960 (Stanford 1997); On Speed: From Benzedrine to Adderall (NYU 2008); Gene Jockeys: Life Science and the Rise of Biotech Enterprise (Johns Hopkins, 2014); Fat in the Fifties: America’s First Obesity Crisis (Johns Hopkins 2019). He is currently working with philosopher Maureen O’Malley (Sydney University) and historian Claas Kirchhelle (INSERM, France) on an ARC-funded historical epistemology study of the microbiome concept.

Our Microbial Lives: A Manifesto Against Eradication - Victoria Lee (Ohio University)
2026-03-30 17:30 - 18:30 | Carslaw Building Lecture Theatre 275, Carslaw Building (F07), Level 2, Room 275, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia
Abstract: There is a growing recognition in the twenty-first century of our dependence on microbes for virtually every aspect of the way we live, including how we grow our food, heal our bodies, and sustain our environment. Yet, microbes are different from other targets of conservation, such as butterflies and elephants: We feel differently about them. This talk traces the nature of microbial charisma as it has changed between efforts toward global eradication of microbial pathogens such as smallpox in the 1970s and the foregrounding of microbes as the life support system of the planet in climate policy after the 2000s. Drawing on research from her book, The Arts of the Microbial World: Fermentation Science in Twentieth-Century Japan (Chicago 2021), Victoria Lee explores how humans have engaged with charismatic microbes in brewing and food production, industrial chemistry, and drug discovery. She invites us to rethink the modern history of human relationships with microbes in light of calls to foster a greater sense of kinship with nonhuman organisms toward a more sustainable future. In particular, she challenges us to consider alternatives to approaches dominated by the goal of absolute control or eradication, in line with the gradual discovery that we live inherently microbial lives.
Bio: Victoria Lee is associate professor of history at Ohio University. Her book, The Arts of the Microbial World (University of Chicago Press, 2021; awarded the International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize for the Best Book in the Humanities, 2023), examined fermentation science in twentieth-century Japan, a society where microbes were distinctively known and used as living workers as much as pathogens, as a direct precedent to the more recent recognition of microbial ecologies as an inseparable part of human society in Europe and America. Her current work considers how twentieth-century microbial history offers insights into twenty-first century questions in light of the growing appreciation of microbes’ role in sustaining organisms at every level of life through the microbiome, mediating climate change (especially in agriculture), and contributing to innovations in green chemistry. She has held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, and her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Mediapart.

Pleonexia and the Public/Private Health Systems - Kathryn MacKay (University of Sydney)
2026-04-20 17:30 - 18:30 | Carslaw Building Lecture Theatre 275, Carslaw Building (F07), Level 2, Room 275, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia
Abstract: ‘Pleonexia’ is an ancient Greek term that means taking or wanting to take more than is one’s due, or avoiding or wanting to avoid contributing what one justly owes. It is often translated as ‘greed,’ though it is more complex than an idea of greed like uncontrolled appetites, gluttony, or avarice. It is also concerned with goods beyond those that are material in nature, and includes honour, respect, and other non-material goods. Importantly, pleonexia is connected to justice and not just to appetite. It demands to know, what are you rightly owed, or what do you rightly owe in turn?
In this paper, I use the idea of pleonexia to interrogate the common practice in Australia whereby physicians and specialists trained in the public healthcare system exit the public system immediately upon completing their training, for an exclusively private healthcare practice. All doctors are trained in the public system, and learn from doctors who have chosen to have all or part of their practice in the public side. However, many doctors choose to exit the public system entirely once their training is completed, removing their skills from the system and closing off access to both other trainees and the patients who would benefit from their practice. I argue that this is a case of pleonexia but not simply in the positive side of wanting more money or status (though these may be involved). Here, I will focus on the other side of pleonexia involved in this case, of not contributing what one justly owes, and leaving the system worse off as a result.
Bio: Kathryn MacKay is a Senior Lecturer and Program Director of the Master of Bioethics at Sydney Health Ethics. She has a BA in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario (Canada), an MA in philosophy from McGill University (Canada), and a PhD in bioethics from the University of Birmingham (UK). Kathryn’s research brings a feminist theoretical lens to the field of bioethics, and especially public health ethics. Her work involves examining issues of human flourishing at the intersection of moral theory, feminist theory, and political philosophy. She has recently published a book on institutional virtue for public health, entitled Public Health Virtue Ethics: Institutions, Structures, and Political Virtue for the Good Society (Routledge, 2025).

PTSD in Australia from DSM-III to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide (2021-2024) - Effie Karageorges (The University of Newcastle)
2026-05-04 17:30 - 18:30 | Carslaw Building Lecture Theatre 275, Carslaw Building (F07), Level 2, Room 275, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia
Effie Karageorgos
Abstract: In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association published the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III), which introduced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new psychiatric category applicable to both civilian and veteran trauma. PTSD differed from previous DSM classifications such as ‘gross stress reaction’ in DSM-I of 1952 and ‘transient situational disturbance’ in 1968’s DSM-II by its insistence that such trauma was not related to personality, but rather ‘normal’ responses to a stressful event. Although this definition harked back to Freudian conceptualisations of ‘psychic trauma’, it was bound by a set of guidelines in line with the neo-Kraepelinian approach of DSM-III. For the military veteran, this new definition was revolutionary, removing – officially, at least – the suggestion common during the First and Second World Wars that traumatic symptoms were caused by faults in individual or hereditary makeup. In Australia, the Department of Veterans Affairs began recognising PTSD as a pensionable condition from the early 1980s, but it was not until the 1990s that Australian veterans mounted a collective approach to advocating for the recognition and pensioning of veteran trauma, predominantly through the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia (VVAA). Since this period, advocacy by the VVAA and other organisations has promoted the biomedical model of veteran trauma in alignment with the DSM, ensuring that veterans retain their respectability as ex-soldiers, while insisting on life-centred treatment options reflecting a biopsychosocial model. This paper focuses on the Australian example, where the foregrounding of military histories within national identity has led to a specific framing of the masculine soldier ‘hero’ that allows little room for men ‘weakened’ by trauma. Despite tireless advocacy by veteran organisations from the 1980s, the recent Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide tells us that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) remains attached to this framing and is yet to embrace the necessarily multifaced approach to ensure quality of life for traumatised military personnel.
Bio: Effie Karageorgos is a historian whose work focuses on conflict, violence, protest, gender and psychiatry. She is Deputy Co-Director of the UON Centre for Society, Health and Care Research, co-editor of Health and History journal and co-investigator on the ARC project ‘Life outside institutions: histories of mental health aftercare 1900 – 1960’ led by Catharine Coleborne. With Natalie Hendry (University of Melbourne), she coordinates the Social Production of Mental Health seminar series, which has formed the basis of their recent edited book Critical Mental Health in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Social and Historical Perspectives (Palgrave, 2025). Her latest book Quiet Protest: A New History of Activism in the Vietnam War is published by UNSW Press in April 2026.

HPS Research Day @ The Sybil Centre
2026-06-01 13:00 - 2026-06-11 17:00 | The Sibyl Centre, 15 Carillon Avenue, Newtown, NSW, 2042, Australia
The School of History and Philosophy of Science Researh Day
June 1st, Monday afternoon, at the Sybil Centre (Women’s College),
15 Carillon Avenue on the Newtown side of campus

Time
Speaker
Title

1.00pm
Dominic Murphy
Introduction and overview

1.15pm
Jo Richards
The Ecological Niche Metaphor and the Rise of Western Anorexia Nervosa in Hong Kong

1.45pm
Jax Gill
The ADHD Discrepancy: An Approach for Reconciling Biology and Historical Emergence in Psychiatry

2.15pm
Stefan Gawronski
Uexküll’s Animals: The Experimental Origins of the Umwelt

3.00pm
Refreshment break

3.30pm
Caitrin Donovan
Othered Minds: Intelligibility, Niche Construction, and the Social-Cognitive Function of Psychiatry

4.15pm
Tsung-Jen Hung (Edward)
The Jamu-ization of Dog Meat and Snakes: Negotiating Purity and Moral Worlds in Java’s Therapeutic Landscape

5.00pm
BREAK

5.30pm
Paul Griffiths
Sex as a Process

7.00pm
Pizza at The Rose (Cleveland St)

Sex as a Process - Paul E. Griffiths - University of Sydney and Macquarie University
2026-06-01 17:30 - 18:30 | The Sibyl Centre, 15 Carillon Avenue, Newtown, NSW, 2042, Australia
Abstract: Biological sex is defined by anisogamy: males produce small gametes, females large gametes. This definition has been criticised as a ‘sex binary’ harmful to sexual and gender minorities. Such criticism conflates gametic sex, which is binary, with phenotypic sex, which is not. There are two gametic sexes, but many kinds of sexed bodies combining sexes in different ways.
In a well-meaning effort to support diverse communities, many theorists have sought to increase the number of sexes. But there is a better solution. That is to realise that sexes are phenotypes. They are not present in miniature in the fertilised egg. Just like arms, livers or musical ability, sexes have to grow. Sex is a process.
Because sexes are phenotypes, chromosomes, nest temperatures and other sex-determining mechanisms may cause the sex of an individual, but they cannot constitute the sex of that individual, any more than the gene for blue eyes can be a blue eye.
This developmental perspective on sex provides a framework for understanding both the evolved diversity of sexed bodies across species and the open-ended, idiosyncratic diversity of sexed bodies within a single species.
Bio: Emeritus Professor Paul Griffiths was formerly Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He has been both a Laureate Fellow (2018) and a Federation Fellow (2007) of the Australian Research Council. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Society of NSW, and was awarded the RSNSW Medal for History and Philosophy of Science in 2019. He was twice appointed to the Australian Health Ethics Committee, a Principal Committee of NHMRC (2006-9, 2009-12).
In 2022 Paul received the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Leadership Award and was named in a Stanford University study as amongst the top 2% of influential academics worldwide. He retired at the beginning of 2024 and in addition to his Emeritus position at University of Sydney he is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Humanities at Macquarie University, where he continues to hold research grants.

Proprioception and Knowledge of the External World in the Long 18th Century - Antonia LoLordo - University of Virginia
2026-08-03 17:30 - 18:30 | Madsen Room 331, Madsen Building F09, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia
Abstract: Mary Shepherd says that motion (or the power of motion) is a sixth sense (or sixth sense organ). I argue that she is talking about proprioception. Shepherd thus holds that proprioception plays a crucial role in acquiring knowledge of the external world, as well as in acquiring the concepts involved. I further argue that proprioception plays a role in knowledge of the external world for many of her predecessors as well—for example, the Berkeley of the New Theory, Condillac, Hume, and Reid—although unlike Shepherd, they do not distinguish proprioception from the sense of touch.
Bio: Antonia LoLordo is George C. and Clare F. Downing Memorial Professor at the University of Virginia. Her work includes Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge), Locke’s Moral Man (Oxford), an edition of Mary Shepherd’s Essays on the Perception of an External Universe (Oxford), and Mary Shepherd (Cambridge), as well as articles on Cugoano, Descartes, Edwards, Gassendi, Hume, Locke, Malebranche, and Shepherd. She is currently working on a book on proprioception and knowledge of the external world in the 18th century.
