HHH winter meeting 2025: Medical history meets disability studies
On January 17, the History, Health & Healing (HHH) network came together in Leiden for the meeting “Medical history meets disability studies”. The meeting brought together a wide range of participants with knowledge, and experience from different fields like medical history, psychiatry, literary sciences, and archaeologists were also present. Throughout the day, four workshops explored how medical history and disability studies connect, overlap, sometimes also challenge each other, and offer new insights.
Workshop 1: “Between medical and disability history: the case of cognitive disability”
The first workshop, led by Vincent Korbee, research master student at Leiden University, focused on how and why intellectually disabled people were placed in institutions during the early twentieth century, looking specifically at the Catholic care facility Huize/Landpark Assisië. Using historical records, he explored (together with fellow researcher Eline van Miert) why people ended up there. Some were sent to Assisië for public safety, others because their families could no longer care for them. During the lecture, Vincent questioned how to interpret the (ambiguous) role of medicine/physicians in the institutionalisation of intellectually disabled people. Doctors played a key role in these decisions, advising judges on who should be institutionalized. Some cases raised difficult questions, like an 8-year-old boy who wasn’t considered mentally ill but was still institutionalized. The presentation sparked a lively discussion with many questions from the audience, for example, about the financial struggles of the families, the authority of medical professionals, and how these kind of institutions sometimes overruled parents’ wishes. Participants reflected on how historians should approach the complex relationship between the history of medicine and the history of intellectual disability. Focusing on the actual historical practice might be a first step in this process. Another highly relevant topic discussed was the role of the researcher and the ethical concerns surrounding the use of medical records, such as disclosing names, photos, and health conditions. There are no general guidelines on how to deal with information from medical records. It’s mostly up to the researcher and the institution where the records are kept. This made it all the more valuable to be able to discuss this issue during the meeting.
Workshop 2: “Disability Archives”
Eline Pollaert, PhD researcher at the VU and member of the Kreukelcollectief (a group of disabled historians, activists, and artists dedicated to documenting the heritage of people with disabilities), led the second workshop. The focus of this interactive lecture was on the challenges of creating a disability archive. Before discussing these challenges Eline delved deeper into the relationship between the history of medicine and disability studies. While the history of medicine often frames disability as a medical issue, disability studies views it as a social and cultural phenomenon. This differing perspective on disability has significant implications for the archival practice. Medical institutions tend to dismiss disability as a social phenomenon, while socio-historical institutions regard it solely as a medical one. These medical histories of disability remain, but the non-medical histories seem to disappear over time. That is why the Kreukelcollectief has been working hard to collect materials that reflect disabled people’s lived experiences, but they’ve faced obstacles, including a lack of support from traditional archives. Eline gave an engaging presentation, which naturally led to a lively discussion. A key conclusion was that there is a certain urgency to preserve heritage relating to disability before valuable materials disappear. Participants also stated that existing archives should make disability-related materials more visible and accessible in their collections. Luckily, Stichting Utopa reached out and wants to help fund and create a disability archive.
If you are interested to learn more about the Kreukelcollectief and their work, they have curated the exhibition “Ik ben gewoon hier” on the intersection of art and disability, open to visitors from April 18 to August 24 at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht.
Workshop 3: “Positionality and disability history”
In the third workshop, Floris Plak, PhD researcher at VU, discussed the concept of positionality in relation to disability history. In his presentation he focuses on his journey toward understanding his own positionality. At first, Floris shares with the audience that initially he didn’t think of himself as a disabled historian, however it was the perception of others that made him reflect on this. Researching a topic that you also personally relate to is often connected to activism, which leads to others seeing your perspective as biased. Floris takes on more of a pragmatic stance toward the role disability plays in his life and states that it is entirely dependable on the context he is in at a certain moment. This way of thinking aligns with the contextual approach to disability, which views disability as something that can change and adapt depending on the situation a person is in. Floris feels that as a historian, his role isn’t to push a political identity or a sense of pride, but rather to share stories in a way that touches people, however that may happen. The presentation was followed by an interesting discussion that touched upon different topics such as how (invisible) disability is experienced differently in different situations, and the balance between objectivity and lived experience.
If you want to know more about Floris’ research, you can read his HHH column: Selling Het Dorp, or the transnational framing of Social Rehabilitation.
Workshop 4: “An 18th-century model of disability: the case of deafness”
Ruben Verwaal led the final workshop, which focused on the longue durée history of deafness, and especially how people understood deafness in the past. The workshop took off with a conversation about disciplinary boundaries. What are the obstacles for historians of medicine to get involved in disability studies, and for disability scholars to explore the history of medicine? The audience came up with several barriers, such as access and knowledge about archives and sources, funding, time, skills and knowledge. The general conclusion was that both medical historians and disability scholars need to interact and read up on each other’s work. After this interesting discussion the audience was split up in smaller groups, and each group had to read a historical text on deafness and figure out the century the text came from. The 17th century text displayed deafness as a natural variation, while 19th– and 20th-century texts treated it as a medical problem that needed to be “fixed.” The exercise showed how society’s attitudes toward deafness have shifted, and how medical and disability history can offer different perspectives on the same topic. Ruben closed of his presentation by arguing for a longue durée approach to studying disability, which will help show how medical ideas are shaped by culture over time. Medicine should be seen as more of a cultural phenomenon to overcome the divide between disability studies and the history of medicine.
Stichting Historia Medicinae Master’s Thesis Award
To close the day, participants reflected on the key takeaways from the workshops during drinks. This was also the moment when the Stichting Historia Medicinae Master’s Thesis Award was presented. This year’s winner was Nienke Groskamp, recognized for her thesis The Haunted Female Body: Abortion and Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century America, which sheds new light on the connections between religion, medicine, and reproductive rights. If you want to learn more about this topic, you can read Nienke’s HHH column: Abortion in 19th-century America through the eyes of Mary Gove Nichols.
Thank you to all those who attended this first HHH meeting of 2025. We hope to see you at the next one!