2023

8 Mars – From Dissident to Recognised Belligerent? The Free French and the Red Cross Movement, 1940 –1943

Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps and Laure Humbert are presenting their work at the Colloque bilingue, Département Histoire contemporaine/Zeitgeschichte, Université de Fribourg.

3 April – Soigner et résister. Le service de santé de la France Libre dans le monde (1940-1943)

Laure Humbert is presenting her research on the Free French Health Service at the Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po (Paris). This paper is part of a special issue co-edited by the project on medical care in irregular warfare (in preparation, Mouvement Social).

10 June 2023 – Panel – Medical Care in ‘Austere’ Environments during the Second World War, University of Edinburgh.

Dr Roderick Bailey, University of Oxford, Dr Frances Houghton, Open University, Dr Laure Humbert, University of Manchester and Dr Ljubica Spaskovksa, University of Exeter.

This panel aims to advance understanding of medical care during the Second World War by illuminating the work and lived experience of medical men and women on challenging fronts. In particular, it brings together new perspectives and methodologies to examine the medical treatment of sick and wounded in a global range of ‘austere environments’, a concept which can be loosely defined as the provision of skilled casualty care in hostile settings in which medical personnel worked with limited resources, expertise, and relief (Venticinque, 2008). Looking specifically at medical provision in British naval warships, mobile hospitals attached to the French Resistance in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the Yugoslav Partisan medical service, and Japanese POW camps, these papers discuss how medical personnel in these places adapted to prolonged conditions in which medical resources were sparse or non-existent and challenges to health and healthcare were especially extreme. This includes consideration of responses to dilemmas around triage, casualty evacuation, and ‘dual agency’ (ethics versus tactical decisions); the roles of improvisation, innovation, and professional skill; the importance of medical tradition and conventional medical teaching; and ways in social and cultural influences of gender, ethnicity, class and nationality inflected patient care.