28–30 June 2012
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
The
postwar study of human heredity was shaped by an array of fields
engaged with the study of human populations, including cytogenetics,
physical anthropology, epidemiology, public health and demography. This
workshop will address the continuities in population thinking across
these fields, and the shared practices, institutional structures and
analytical and organisational technologies that constituted postwar
human heredity.
The workshop aims to bring into view how human populations were
shaped through sampling protocols and technologies of data organization.
It will emphasize the roles of international organizations, such as the
World Health Organization, in promoting and coordinating collection
practices across different disciplines and countries. It will also
recover the ways in which data and samples were negotiated by
researchers with different interests, and re-appropriated in
disciplinarily diverse research programmes.
The workshop is supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Genetics Society and by the Wellcome Trust Strategic Award in the History of Medicine on the theme Generation to Reproduction
(awarded to the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and
colleagues in Classics, Geography, History, King's and Physiology,
Development & Neuroscience, University of Cambridge).
Convened by Jenny Bangham (University of Cambridge) and Soraya de Chadarevian (University of California, Los Angeles).
Thursday 28 June
The genetics of human populations
| 14:00 |
Veronika Lipphardt (Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science, Berlin): Studies of human variation after 1945:
genetics, anthropology and public health |
| 14:45 |
Lisa Gannett (Saint Mary's University, Halifax): 'Population', 'ethnicity', and 'race' in genetics |
| 15:30 |
Coffee and tea |
Genetics, populations, public health
| 16:00 |
Soraya de Chadarevian (University of California, Los Angeles): Chromosome surveys of human populations: between epidemiology and anthropology |
| 16:45 |
Edna Suarez (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México): Indigenous populations in Mexico: medical genetics and cultural
anthropology in the work of Ruben Lisker in the 1960s |
| 17:30 |
Susanne Bauer (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt): Mutations in Soviet public health: post-Lysenko medical genetics and epidemiology, 1969–1991 |
| 18:15 |
Discussion |
| 19:00 |
Dinner |
Friday 29 June
Sampling and collecting
| 09:30 |
Jenny Bangham (University of Cambridge): Sampling
practices and institutional networks in postwar blood-group anthropology
in Britain, 1946–1956 |
| 10:15 |
Joanna Radin (University of Pennsylvania):
Standardizing variation: World Health Organization working groups and
human tissue collection, 1958–1970 |
| 11:00 |
Coffee and tea |
| 11:30 |
Alexandra Widmer (Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science, Berlin): Of indigenous knowledge and Melanesian
blood: Carleton Gadjusek's research practices on blood and genetic
diversity in the Western Pacific Islands (1960s–1970s) |
Heredity and demography
| 12:15 |
Edmund Ramsden (University of Exeter): Postwar British demography: survey technologies of the UK Population Investigation Committee |
| 13:00 |
Lunch |
Heredity in the clinic
| 15:00 |
María Jesús Santesmases (Centro de Ciencias Humanas
y Sociales, CSIC, Madrid): Prenatal testing and the autonomous
karyotype: children, pregnant women, and early Down syndrome
cytogenetics, 1962–1975 |
| 15:45 |
Ilana Löwy (Centre de Recherche Medicine, Science Santé et Societé, Paris): How genetics came to the unborn: 1960–1990 |
| 16:30 |
Coffee and tea |
| 17:00 |
Susan Lindee (University of Pennsylvania): Respondent |
| |
Discussion |
| 19:30 |
Dinner and further discussion |
Saturday 30 June
| 09:30–12:00 |
General discussion re: Studies Special Issue (speakers only) |
| 12:00 |
Lunch |
