Upcoming conferences

thomja on 15. August 2019

I have had two talks recently accepted for presentation at future conferences!

In November, I will chair a session called “Anthropological Insights from Historical Epidemics” at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Vancouver, BC. My talk will be on theoretical issues and preliminary data from my MSCA project. Other speakers include Svenn-Erik Mamelund, Carolyn Orbann, Taylor Paskoff, Paul Hackett, Lawrence Sawchuk, and Lianne Tripp, who have a range of expertise on different historical populations and epidemics.

In March 2020, I also will be talking about my MSCA project at the European Social Science History Conference in Leiden, the Netherlands.

But before both of those, I will attend “Opening up the Archives: Disability History and Heritage Conference to Mark the Opening of the RHN Archive Service.” This short conference in London will include speakers on 19th century disability history, archive handling sessions and guided tours of the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. I am looking forward to this opportunity for networking and training!

Podcast interview

thomja on 20. July 2019

I recently recorded an interview about my background and current project. Give it a listen!

A Trip to the Archives

thomja on 5. July 2019

Archival documents on the Spanish flu

The cover of this folder of documents reads Spansksyke (Spanish flu), another term for the 1918 flu pandemic.

On Monday, the project supervisor Svenn-Erik Mamelund, our colleague (and hopefully future Marie Curie fellow) Kandace Bogaert, and I went to the National Archives of Norway. We found some promising documents, and I look forward to spending more time there in the future!

Recent presentations

thomja on 24. June 2019

On June 15 at the Nordic Demographic Symposium in Reykjavik, I presented a paper recently published with Svenn-Erik Mamelund on tuberculosis as a risk factor during the 1918 pandemic. I will present this research again later this week at the European Society of Historical Demography Conference in Pécs, Hungary.

This study compared morbidity and mortality for patients and staff at two TB sanatoriums in Norway. We found that patients generally had lower rates of illness but higher case fatality rates. This study will provide an excellent comparison to future work that will look at individuals living or working in institutions such as psychiatric hospitals and special schools. In fact, our next goal is to analyze data on several asylums collected in the same source.

Find the TB paper here.

Welcome!

thomja on 24. June 2019

For more information on the project, please read through the “About” pages (links on the side of the blog).

Please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or concerns!