International Health and the Limits of its Global Influence: Bhutan and the Worldwide Smallpox Eradication Programme

Informal seminar with Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Director of the Centre for Global Health Histories, University of York. Publication in Medical History Journal.

Sanjoy Bhattacharya is Director of the Centre for Global Health Histories (University of York), a Professor in the History of Medicine, a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator and Head of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories. Sanjoy specialises in the medical, environmental, political and social history of nineteenth and twentieth century South Asia, as well as the history and contemporary workings of international and global health programmes.

Sanjoy is deeply involved in the World Health Organization’s Global Health Histories project (GHH). He has worked closely with the WHO Department of Knowledge Management and Sharing on this initiative since 2004, which has led to GHH being made an ‘Office Specific Expected Result’ (an official and audited WHO activity). Sanjoy’s involvement in this context has allowed him to work on history and policy linkages, on inter-disciplinary perspectives in medical history and humanities, and on independent and critical assessments of global health policy.

Sanjoy is editor of the journal Medical History, a world leading publication in its field. Published by Cambridge University Press from 2012 onwards, with generous support from the Wellcome Trust, Medical Historyshowcases the best scholarship and fosters interest in the history of medicine and health worldwide. Cambridge University Press also appointed Sanjoy editor of a new monograph series titled Global Health Histories in October 2013. He also co-edits, with Niels Brimnes and Nitin Sinha, New Perspectives in South Asian History, which is an established series of monographs published by Orient Blackswan India Ltd since 2001.

Published Feb. 16, 2016 12:30 PM - Last modified Apr. 11, 2019 8:43 AM