David Bannister

Image of David Bannister
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Phone +47 22844638
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Visiting address Kirkeveien 166 Fredrik Holsts hus 0450 Oslo
Postal address Postboks 1130 Blindern 0318 Oslo

Current work

My current research focuses on Ghana, and attempts to locate the past in the present: how experiences and memories of state health provision in earlier periods (as shaped by various policy goals and ideologies from the late colonial period to the present) give rise to particular generational expectations regarding the responsibilities of the state, the role of transnational and non-governmental health organisations, the nature of Universal Health Coverage, and what ultimately constitutes a fair distribution of health resources. The project also examines the way that healthcare subsists or is elided in memory - which features of past health systems remain salient in memory over time, and why. The study is based on documentary sources of various kinds, and on interviews with current and retired health officials, health workers, and with groups who were on the receiving end of health services from the 1940s to the present. 

Here is a link to my current project . This is part of the broader European Research Council-funded project, Universal Health Coverage and the Public Good in Africa , led by Ruth Prince.

Background and academic interests

I'm interested in the contemporary history of healthcare, the political economy of health and disease, the social history of public health and medical science in Africa, and in the relationships between specific public health interventions in different periods.

I'm particularly interested in contested moral economies of health and health services - in Africa and globally - and in what historical and current patterns of distribution can reveal about an institution's relationship to particular communities or regions over time. This includes a focus on the historical role of the state, and its notional responsibilities either as a direct provider of public health, or as a mediator between the public and various other organisations. I'm also interested in oral history, as a method for understanding post-independence transitions in African and global health.  

My last research project examined the long-run history of public health in northern Ghana from 1900 to approximately 2015. The project discussed the evolution of state health institutions and financing policies across the period - accounting for distributive tensions between core and peripheral regions of the state , and for the shifting arrangements of international and 'global' health. I attempted to relate these institutional developments to a finer-grained social history which examined the reactions of northern Ghanaian communities to institutional change, the position of health practitioners and officials working on the margins of the state system, and the role of local advocacy. The research drew on sources from national and district archives in Ghana, from the archives of the WHO in Geneva, and on group interviews with urban and rural communities in the three administrative regions of the north. I also carried out interviews with current and retired Ghanaian health officials, who had held responsibility for planning and managing health services from the 1970s to the present.

In the past I've researched the social history of epidemic meningococcal disease in colonial West Africa; the role of smallpox in shaping political relations between Britain and the Asante Confederacy over the 19 th century; and the relationship between South Africa's African National Congress and the Soviet Union from 1950-1990.

I have previously taught courses in global history from 1500 CE to the present, in general African history from 500 BCE to the present, on the 19th century colonial encounter in West Africa, and on disease and health in 20th century African history. 

Publications, Presentations & Engagement

Books, Chapters & Articles

Bannister, David (2022). 'Whose public, whose goods? Generations of patients and visions of fairness in Ghanaian health'. Social Science and Medicine . ISSN 0277-9536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115393 .

Bannister, David (2021). 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice: sleeping sickness, onchocerciasis and unintended consequences in Ghana, 1930-1960', The Journal of African History,  62 (1), 29-57. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853721000177 

Bannister, David (2022). 'Wilful Blindness: Sleeping Sickness and Onchocerciasis in Colonial Northern Ghana, 1909–1957',  Social History of Medicine , Volume 35, Issue 2, May 2022, Pages 635–660,  https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/ hkab119

David Bannister. 'Social Medicine beyond Colonial Rule, 1930-2015'. Chapter in Greene J., Kveim Lie A. and Anderson W. (eds), Global Histories of Social Medicine. Cambridge University Press (Accepted, forthcoming)

Howard, Bannister and Fonseca. 'Contextualising Global Health: Anthropological and Historical Approaches', Chapter in Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Global Health. (forthcoming) 

Bannister, Marks and Wallace (eds.) ‘The Hoehoe Symposium on the History of Health Services in Ghana’. A 3-day symposium which brought together senior current and retired Ghanaian health officials for recorded group discussions, funded by the Wellcome Trust. Commentary and proceedings in preparation for open-source publication. (Forthcoming)

Under Review, Working Papers and Pre-Prints 

'Disease and the Landscape: The contemporary legacies of epidemic disease control in Africa'. Ethnographic/Historical research article in preparation.

'Socialism in the history of African Health'. Bibliographic/Historiographical article in preparation. 

Bannister, David. 'Remembering the cost: Oral history and payment for health services in Ghana, 1945-2019'. (Working paper)

Bannister, David. 'Who gets the worm? Guinea worm disease and the origins of regional inequities in Ghana, 1900-2015'. (Working paper)

Presentations & Conferences

July 2022: Ghana Studies Association Trienniale Conference – ‘Ghana at a Crossroads’. Roundtable on Public Health in Ghana. ‘Networks in Ghanaian Healthcare from 1957 to the Present’. Convened and chaired a roundtable which brought together senior Ghanaian health officials for a discussion with an academic audience

July 20, 2022: Ghana Studies Association Trienniale Conference. Panel presentation titled ‘Spraying for a Century: The Afterlife of Disease Control Programmes in Northern Ghana, 1920-2020’.

June - July 2022: Society for the Social History of Medicine Biennale Conference, Swansea. Panel: ‘Archival resilience in global health history: aspects of preservation and failure’. Paper: ‘The sum of their parts? Writing post-independence histories of health in Ghana (1957-2019)’

June, 2022: ‘Disease and the Landscape: Legacies of epidemic disease control in Africa’. Paper presented at the ‘Afterlives of Epidemics’ Conference, Oslo. 

June 2022: Rosendal Workshop on history of Social Medicine. Presentated chapter at this workshop on Global Histories of Social Medicine. Kindly hosted by Anne Kveim Lie, Jeremy Green and Warwick Anderson.

March 2021. D. Bannister. Presentation at the European Conference on Social Sciences and History, Leiden, Netherlands, as part of the panel ‘‘Primary Health Care’ in Post-War Global Health: Making and Meaning’. Paper title: ‘Into the hitherto untouched periphery’: Planning, Primary Health Care and changing idioms of health governance in Ghana, 1957-1996’.

January 2021. D.Bannister. Presentation at the University of Oslo African Anthropology Seminar. Paper title: Where the present begins: Guinea Worm disease and the regionalisation of inequity in Ghana, 1900-2015

October 2019 – D. Bannister. Presentation at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, as part of the Histories in Global Health Seminar Series. Paper title: 'Remembering the cost: oral history and payment for health services in Ghana, 1945-2019'.

September 2019 - D.Bannister. Presentation at the workshop “Curious Utopias: Large and Small Blueprints for Human Society” in Oslo. Paper title: ‘Absent Utopias in Ghanaian healthcare: Independence, Alma Ata, and the Information Age, 1957-2019’.

July 2019 – D. Bannister. Presentation at the triennial Ghana Studies Association Conference, in Accra. Paper title: ‘Colonial tsetse control and post-independence onchocerciasis in Ghana’.

11-14 June 2019. D.Bannister. Co-convened panel and presentation at ECAS (European Conference on African Studies), University of Edinburgh. Panel title: “Remembering Alma Ata? Revisiting 'health for all' amid aspirations for universal health coverage in Africa”. Paper title: ‘Care, Adjustment, Coverage: Oral History and the Diffusion of Global Health Policy in Ghana, 1945-2019’.

April 2019 – D.Bannister. Presentation at Sites of Health, a Symposium on the Medical Humanities, Shanghai, organized by University of Strathclyde, University of Shanghai, and the Wellcome Trust. Paper title:  ‘The periphery’s periphery: northern Ghana in the past and present of global health, 1900-2015’.

March 2019 - D.Bannister. Presentation to SUM ‘Global Health Unpacked’ Seminar Series, University of Oslo. Paper title: ‘History, policy, and the road to Universal Health Coverage in Ghana, 1930-2015’. 

October 2018 – Astana Global Conference on Primary Care. D. Bannister attended the Inter-government Astana Conference (organised by the UN and WHO) as a representative of the project 'Universal Health Coverage and the Public Good in Africa'.

Public Engagement, Online & Miscellaneous

April 2020 - D. Bannister. Online Article: 'Futures and the past in Ghana's Universal Health Coverage infrastructure'. Somatosphere  (April 2020):  http://somatosphere.net/2020/universal-health-coverage-ghana.html/ 

November 2018 - D. Bannister. Online blog post: 'After Alma Ata, after Astana: a new year of Global Health and UHC'

October 2018 – D. Bannister. Radio Interview. Participated in a radio debate on Universal Health Coverage in Africa, broadcast by the BBC World Service .

 

Publications

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Published Oct. 10, 2018 10:51 AM - Last modified Sep. 8, 2023 11:49 PM