In August, Giorgio Ennas and Evren Cakil will present at EAHMH 2025 Health Beyond Medicine. This year’s conference is hosted by the Humboldt University Berlin and will take place between 26 and 29 August. Fellow postdoc Ennas is scheduled to participate on the 27th, together with Dr. Shiori Nosaka, Dr. Cansu Degirmencioglu and Dr. Léa…

The COOPERATION research team gathered on 30 June to review progress, align on the next steps to take, and celebrate achievements made. The last 12 months have been productive. Before starting the discussion, team members showed on a map all the places they have been to. Together, they have covered a huge area, that ranges…

On 23 May, Gert Huskens presented in Aix-en-Provence his paper Murky water in Tangier. Sanitary transimperialism and Belgian economic expansion in (pre-)colonial Morocco, 1899-1920 at the 6th New Diplomatic History Conference in the panel Humanitarian and health diplomacy chaired by prof. Benoît Pouget. In his contribution, Huskens looked at the Belgian entrepreneurs and companies that…

On 2nd July, Charles Ough will present his paper From Revolution to Ruin: Subaltern Politics, Social Change and Sectarian Violence in Mount Lebanon, 1858-60 at the 2025 British Society of Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) annual conference, this year hosted by Newcastle University in the North East of England. Mr Ough looks at the 1858 peasants’…

PhD candidate Bryony Harris gave a great presentation at the Humanities Graduate School Conference, titled ‘Disease control and bodily autonomy in Mehmed Ali’s Egypt (1831-1843). As a team, we are all very proud of her and look forward to follow her progress.

On 5 June, Giorgio Ennas will be presenting in Naples his paper Who is afraid to cooperate? The Sanitary Council of Tunis between fear and cooperation at the conference ‘Epidemics: contacts and contagions, reactions, and emotions’, focused on reactions and emotions in the face of epidemics in the pre-industrial age. Ennas is investigating how, between…

On 28 April we spoke with Frank Huisman about the efforts to decolonize (the history of) global health, as described in ‘A World South-Side Up? Global health and the Provincializing of Europe’. This article, co-edited with Nancy Tomes, was published in the European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health in 2021. We want…

This collection brings together contributions that explore the many lives of ‘security’ in the nineteenth century. The contributors examine how the quest for security shaped imperial cooperation and competition, while also being used as a pretext for colonial expansion, violence, and genocide—patterns that persist in various forms today. Crucially, the pursuit of security created new…

On 12 March Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky gave an enthralling book presentation. The event appropriately took place in the room named after the late Alex Brenninkmeijer, ardent defender of civil rights. Attendants gathered in anticipation to hear Vladimir speak about the overlooked humanitarian crisis that took place in the 19th Century, when Circassians were forced into exile….

On 6 February, Dr. Jan Eijking from Oxford University presented his draft article on the history of international sanitary conferences and the concept of ‘technocratic capture.’ The ERC COOPERATION team reviewed his article and provided feedback, which we hope he found helpful. We wish him success with his article and his fascinating research.