Keynote Speakers
Professor Gayle Davis
United Kingdom
Gayle Davis is Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She has published widely on the social history of medicine, particularly the interface between reproduction, clinical practice and the law in post-1945 Britain. Her recent publications include (authored with Sheldon, O'Neill and Parker) The Abortion Act 1967: A Biography of a UK Law (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2022); (edited with Sethna) Abortion Across Borders: Transnational Travel and Access to Abortion Services (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019); and (edited with Tracey Loughran) The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
Professor Hans Pols
Sydney, NSW
Hans Pols, PhD, FAHA, FASSA, FRSN is Professor at the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He is interested in the history of colonial medicine and the transformation medical research, medical care, and public health underwent during the process of decolonization. His research has focused on the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia, and has mostly focused on psychiatry and mental health. After exploring the current state and future plans for community mental health services in a research project supported by the Australian Research Council, Hans embarked on an ARC-funded research project on the history of community mental health in Australia. His book Nurturing Indonesia: Medicine and Decolonisation in the Dutch East Indies was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. Most recently, he published, with Mark Micale, an edited volume on reactions to highly traumatizing events in Asia: Traumatic Pasts in Asia: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma, 1930 to the Present (New York: Berghahn Books, 2021).
Dr Charmaine Robson
Sydney, NSW
Dr Charmaine Robson is a scholar of the history of health and its intersections with nursing, missions and Australian colonialiasm. She has a Bachelor of Pharmacy from Monash University and a PhD from the University of New South Wales where she is currently Adjunct Lecturer and teaches undergraduate history. She held the State Library of New South Wales Religious History Fellowship for 2017. She has researched, lectured and published extensively on Hansen’s disease policy and institutions in Australia. In 2022 her book, Missionary Women, Leprosy and Indigenous Australians 1936-1986 was released - a study that situates nursing and religion within the context of public health and Indigenous affairs policies.