Videos & Podcasts

Octavian Buda

7th May 2009; Goethe Institute Riga, Latvia.

Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) is identified as the founder of contemporary scientific psychiatry, as well as of psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics. Kraepelin believed that psychiatric diseases stemmed  from biological and genetic malfunctions. His theories dominated the field of psychiatry at the start of the twentieth century, despite the later psychodynamic incursions of Sigmund Freud and his followers.

Ken Kalling

7th May 2009; Goethe Institute Riga, Latvia.

In this lecture, Ken Kalling investigates the themes and agents that sought to biologize Estonian national thought between the turn of 19th century and the Second World War. Ken argues that Estonian eugenics’ popular appeal lay with its ability to constitute the lowest common denominator adjoining popular scientific knowledge, populism, and social reasoning. Analysing how a small nation’s self perception broached the questions of how to regulate the quality and quantity of it’s ‘stock’, and the influence exerted by its substantial pre-independence anti-alcohol movement, Ken traces the institutionalisation of Estonian eugenics from the 1924 creation of  the ‘Estonian Eugenics Society’ unto the 1940 Soviet rescinding of the country’s eugenic legislation.

Anne Digby

17th March 2009; Oxford Brookes University

Race has been called the South African disease, and in this lecture I shall be discussing two aspects of it as it relates to my recent and forthcoming research on the history of medicine in South Africa. After outlining some general points about the distinctive features of the country, I outline my current project on changing access to public and private healthcare in a segregationist and then apartheid society from the 1940s to 1990s.

28th February 2009, Oxfordshire Science Festival Opening Day,

The 2009 ‘Oxfordshire Science Festival’ began with the launch event ‘Science in Your World’ held on the 28 February 2009 in Oxford’s Bonn Square. Opened by Professor Marcus Du Sautoy’s ‘Mind Games’ show, the event featured 15 organizations whose themed stalls showcased their particular research interests with various hands on activities for all ages, in addition to the half hourly science shows.