AAHM 2025

D4. Humanities Labs and the History of Medicine/Healthcare 
Chair: Ayah Nuriddin, Yale University  
 
This roundtable explores the work of humanities labs in expanding what it means to do the history of medicine and healthcare. Humanities labs can be broadly defined as transdisciplinary spaces and communities for collaborative and/or public facing scholarship. For historians of medicine and healthcare, humanities labs build on a longer history of engaged scholarship. They create opportunities for collaboration with students, healthcare professionals, and community members on issues of systemic harm and structural inequality. With increasing attacks on the humanities in higher education and ongoing health disparities in the United States, humanities labs are important for making the history of medicine and healthcare legible for a wider audience and translating historical insights into tangible interventions for addressing structural and medical challenges. They also create important spaces for academic institutions to work with local communities to alleviate harm, address histories of violence, and repair trust.

The roundtable will discuss the work of building humanities labs in universities including issues of lab management, space, and funding. Participants will discuss both the opportunities and challenges of the “laboratory” as a site for collaboration and community engagement. The roundtable will feature the work of the emerging Critical Histories Lab at Yale, the Historically Informed Policy (HIP) Lab at Emory, the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab at UCLA, and the Black Box Lab at Wesleyan. Keywords: Humanities lab, transdisciplinary, pedagogy.

* Respond to changes in medical practice guided by a historically informed concept of professional responsibility and patient advocacy.
* Recognize the dynamic interrelationship between medicine and society through history
* Understand the role of humanities labs for transdisciplinary and collaborative learning and teaching