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X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for History and Philosophy of Science Events
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DTSTART:20250101T000000
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260302T173000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260302T183000
DTSTAMP:20260425T142342
CREATED:20260219T034758Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260223T215003Z
UID:157-1772472600-1772476200@hps-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:Planetary Health beyond Spaceship Earth? - Warwick Anderson
DESCRIPTION:Abstract \nFor 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? \nBio \nWarwick 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.
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/planetary-health-beyond-spaceship-earth-warwick-anderson/
LOCATION:Carslaw Building Lecture Theatre 275\, Carslaw Building (F07)\, Level 2\, Room 275\, The University of Sydney\, NSW\, 2006\, Australia
CATEGORIES:Seminar,Seminars
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260309T173000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260309T183000
DTSTAMP:20260425T142342
CREATED:20260303T053052Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260303T053311Z
UID:171-1773077400-1773081000@hps-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South
DESCRIPTION: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. \nBio: 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.  \nHer 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. \nHer 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. \nIn 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. \nKylie 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.
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/jim-crow-in-the-asylum-psychiatry-and-civil-rights-in-the-american-south/
LOCATION:Carslaw Building 450\, Carslaw Building (F07)\, Level 4\, Room 450\, The University of Sydney\, New South Wales\, 2006\, Australia
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260323T173000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260323T183000
DTSTAMP:20260425T142342
CREATED:20260311T072601Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260311T072601Z
UID:178-1774287000-1774290600@hps-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:Colonization Resistance and the Gut Microbiota ca 1960-1990: Persistence of an Ecological Paradigm in Medical Microbiology - Nicolas Ramussen (UNSW)
DESCRIPTION: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. \n\nBio: 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.
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/colonization-resistance-and-the-gut-microbiota-ca-1960-1990-persistence-of-an-ecological-paradigm-in-medical-microbiology-nicolas-ramussen-unsw/
LOCATION:Carslaw Building Lecture Theatre 275\, Carslaw Building (F07)\, Level 2\, Room 275\, The University of Sydney\, NSW\, 2006\, Australia
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260330T173000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260330T183000
DTSTAMP:20260425T142342
CREATED:20260317T032353Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260317T034039Z
UID:181-1774891800-1774895400@hps-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:Our Microbial Lives: A Manifesto Against Eradication - Victoria Lee (Ohio University)
DESCRIPTION: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. \nBio: 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.
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/our-microbial-lives-a-manifesto-against-eradication-victoria-lee-ohio-university/
LOCATION:Carslaw Building Lecture Theatre 275\, Carslaw Building (F07)\, Level 2\, Room 275\, The University of Sydney\, NSW\, 2006\, Australia
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