Conference Season

Further to the conference announcement we posted last month, here are details of more upcoming conferences which may interest our readers:

The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is hosting a one-day postgraduate History of Psychology and Psychiatry Conference on 19 March 2011. It is intended to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas amongst postgraduate students in the UK and abroad conducting research in this field.

Birmingham City University has organised a one-day conference on Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the 19th Century for 13 May 2011, to be held in the redundant chapel of All Saints’ Hospital (formerly Birmingham Lunatic Asylum), now closed.

Birkbeck College is hosting a weekend conference on The Language of Illness and Pain on 2-3 July 2011. It will be supported by an exhibition exploring the creative interaction between medicine and the humanities.

The 24th Congress of the British Society for the History of Medicine will take place at the University of Guildford from 31 August to 3 September 2011, and will cover topics ranging from ‘museums and archives’ to ‘medicine and madness’.

The 2010 Conference of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, devoted to the theme of ‘Body and Mind in the History of Medicine and Health’, will take place at Utrecht University on 1-4 September 2011.

The Joy of the Travelling Archivist

Yesterday Hull History Centre played host to local schoolchildren out on a visit to celebrate National Storytelling Week. By all accounts, great fun was had by all. But these and others missed out on the mini conference of archivists held in the meeting room next door, devoted to the “New Archive Buildings and Services.” Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives & Museum sent a representative because of our plans to relocate elsewhere on the Hospital site in the (reasonably) near future. A series of presentations drew attention to various recent new building projects. Much of the day was devoted to recounting technical challenges encountered and solutions found in the course of relocation projects, but one contributor (Ian Mason from The Treasure House in Beverley) encouraged the conference to regard the time and effort expended on any move as an investment which will in time pay off.

The papers presented were, however, not the only source of inspiration available to participants. Hull History Centre is itself a brand new facility, which was seen and used at its best in yesterday’s glorious Yorkshire sunshine.