This event, the second in a series of three international conferences (2025–2026–2027), aims to explore the history of psychiatry in English-speaking countries. This year’s central theme, Theories & Policies, seeks to assess the relationship between theories and policies at different periods in history and across various geographical areas in the English-speaking world (US, Canada, South Africa, the UK etc).

Presentation

This event, the second in a series of three international conferences (2025–2026–2027), aims to explore the history of psychiatry in English-speaking countries. This year’s central theme, Theories & Policies, seeks to assess the relationship between theories and policies at different periods in history and across various geographical areas in the English-speaking world (US, Canada, South Africa, the UK etc).

We will also have the pleasure of hearing from our two keynote speakers : one of the leading specialists in the field, Prof. Andrew Scull (University of San Diego), as well as Prof. Erika Dyck (University of Saskatchewan), who is specialised in the history of psychedelic drugs, the history of psychiatry, and eugenics.

The conference programme is available here : https://whocares.hypotheses.org/conference-programme-who-cares-2026

All papers are in English. Everyone welcome. In-person only : Université Paris Nanterre.

Conference programme

DAY 1 : Thursday 19 March 2026

8.45 Welcome & registration

9-9.15 Opening speech, Françoise KRÁL (director of the CREA research laboratory, Université Paris Nanterre)

9.15-10.15 : Keynote 1 : Pr Andrew Scull (Emeritus Professor in Sociology, University of California San Diego) : “A Psychiatric Revolution”

Chair : Marie Derrien (Université de Lille)

10.15-10.30 Coffee break

10.30-12.30 : PANEL 1 : Decision-making and/in psychiatry

Chair : Charlotte Gould (Université Paris Nanterre)

• Susan Barrett (Senior lecturer in British studies, Université Bordeaux Montaigne) : “‘From a topic in itself uninviting and dry’ to the ‘burning injustices of mental health’ : the evolution of the language around mental health used by British politicians, 1845-2025”
• Louise Hide (Senior Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London) “From political resistance to opening the floodgates : what can we learn from NHS hospital inquiry records from the late 1960s-1970s ?”
• Susan Hogan (Professor in Arts and Health, University of Derby), “Social prescribing : policy and practice”
• Elisabeth Fauquert (Senior lecturer in American studies, Université Paris Nanterre), “Peers not Police : US Psychiatric First Response Reform since the creation of 911”

12.30-2.20 : Lunch break (buffet)

2.20-3.20 : PANEL 2 : Psychiatry, decolonisation and racial bias

Chair : Michel PRUM (Université Paris Cité)

• Rory Du Plessis (Associate Professor, School of Arts, University of Pretoria) : “British theorising on Boer insanity during the South African War”
• Cécile Birks (Senior lecturer in British and Commonwealth studies, Université Paris Nanterre) : “The eugenic interlude in South African mental health institutions, 1900-1948”

3.20-3.40 Coffee break

3.40-4.40 : PANEL 3 : Religion

Chair : Claire LABARBE (Université Paris Nanterre)

• Samuel Binkley (Professor of Sociology, Emerson College), “We may have never been therapeutic : Quaker faith and the birth of the asylum”
• Rachel Ditchfield (PhD candidate, University of Liverpool/Imperial War Museum), “Ministering to the mind diseased : the role of the chaplain in medico-moral model of late-nineteenth-century asylum”

4.45-5.30 : Psychopathological artworks in translation - a virtual exhibition by Master’s students in Translation Studies from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

5.30-7.30 : Cocktail / Poster presentations : French translations of a selection of poems from Rory Du Plessis’s collection I See You by Master’s students in Translation Studies from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

DAY 2 : Friday 20 March 2026

9.15-10.45 : Guided tour of the medical library at Sainte-Anne Psychiatric Hospital : Bibliothèque Henri Ey , 1 rue Cabanis 75014 Paris (Conference delegates only)

12-1.50 : Back to Nanterre Lunch break (buffet)

1.50-3.20 : PANEL 4 : Psychiatry, politics and crime

Chair : Julie LE GAC (Université Paris Nanterre, IUF)

• Helen Goodman (Postdoctoral researcher, Bath Spa University) : “Assassination and attempted regicide : the certification, treatment, and punishment of criminal insanity in Britain and in the US, from Queen Victoria to JFK”
• Laurence Dubois (Senior lecturer in British studies, Université Paris Nanterre) : “‘It is unjust to ordinary patients to associate them with persons branded with crime’ : the political and medical debate on the necessity of establishing separate asylums for criminal lunatics in mid-Victorian Britain”
• Alice Béja (Associate Professor in US-American studies, Sciences Po Lille) : “‘There is comradeship in the depths’ : mental health and the politics of care in US anarchist communities at the turn of the 20th century”

3.20-3.40 Coffee break

3.40-5.40 : PANEL 5 : Diagnosis and treatment

Chair : Fabienne MOINE (Université Paris-Est Créteil)

• Hilary Marland (Emeritus Professor in History, University of Warwick) : “ ‘She resembles both a puerperal & an alcoholic confusion’ : insanity, childbirth and diagnosis at Rainhill Asylum, Liverpool, c. 1900”
• Will Slauter (Professor in Anglophone studies, Sorbonne Université) : “Reminiscence Therapy : Origins, Applications, and Controversies”
• Nicolas Schwalbe (ATER adjunct lecturer in the Department of Psychoanalytic Studies, Université Paris Cité, and psychoanalyst), “Patient testimony as political theory : James Frame, no-restraint, and the politics of nineteenth-century Scottish psychiatry”
• Rhodri Hayward (Associate Professor in History, Queen Mary University of London) : “The unlikely integration of cybernetics and social medicine : remaking psychiatry in post-war Britain”

Dinner in town (Conference delegates only)

DAY 3 : Saturday 21 March 2026

9.00-9.15 Welcome (back) coffee

9.15-10-15 : Keynote 2 : Professor Erika Dyck (Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan), “Psychiatry, the RCT, and Drug Policy : the Case of Psychedelics”

10.15-10.30 Coffee break

10.30-11.30 : PANEL 6 : Circulations and transfers

Chair : Elisa Chelle (Université Paris Nanterre)

• Claire Deligny (Senior lecturer in British studies, Université Paris Nanterre) : “War from the wards : the Lancashire asylums and the Great War (1914-1922)”
• Léna Monème (PhD candidate in history, University of Luxembourg) : “The refugee and immigrant dichotomy in British psychiatry, 1945-1965”

11.30-11.45 Closing speech, by the Who Cares committee members