ABOUT US
We are three historians who work at the Institute for Ethics, History and the Humanities; an interdisciplinary centre based in the University of Geneva’s Faculty of Medicine. After having completed training in very diverse fields – architecture and art history (Brenda Lynn Edgar), literature and gender studies (Marie Leyder) and philosophy and the history of science (Dolores Martín Moruno) – we are now invested in the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) research project “Those women who performed humanitarian action: a gendered history of compassion from the Franco-Prussian war to WWII”, as well as its extension “Lived humanitarianism: gender, experiences and knowledge(s) (1853–1945)“.
“The objective of our research is to reconstruct the knowledge that women humanitarians produced, as they came to the assistance of war victims, in the light of categories such as gender, class, race, ethnicity, as well as religion.“
The objective of our research is to reconstruct the knowledge that women humanitarians produced, as they came to the assistance of war victims, in the light of categories such as gender, class, race, ethnicity, as well as religion. This approach allows us to understand this knowledge as a set of care-related practices that have remained invisible from the viewpoint of officially recognised medical practitioners. Widely perceived as gestures originating from female compassion, these practices have not been recognised as real work.
We have published the results of our research in different special editions of reviews such as “Feminist perspectives on the history of humanitarian relief (1870-1945)” and “Feeling humanitarianism during the Spanish Civil War and Republican exile”. We are also working on two books: Making Humanitarian Crises: Emotions and Images in History (to be published by Palgrave Macmillan) and Beyond Compassion: Gender and Humanitarian Action (to be published by Cambridge University Press).
Our research team “Women_Humanitari@ns” is enriched by exchanges with a large network of collaborators based within the Institute for Gender Studies, the Centre for Affective Sciences and the Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action at the University of Geneva, as well as the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute based at the University of Manchester (UK), the Institución Milà i Fontanals (Spanish National Research Council, Barcelona), the University of Queensland (Australia) and New York University. We also work closely with practitioners at the Geneva University Hospitals and NGOs such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors without Borders (MSF).
Our zeal for initiating dialogue outside the academic sphere has led us to delve into the SNSF Agora project “Beyond compassion: Gender and Humanitarian action”. This project aims to allow our research to benefit society through the organisation of an exhibition with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum. It also has the parallel objective of producing humanitarian historical knowledge with you, our readers, and preserving it within this website.
We are overjoyed at the idea of seeing you again on-line and/or in person in the heart of Geneva very soon!
Our zeal for initiating dialogue outside the academic sphere has led us to delve into the SNSF Agora project “Beyond compassion: Gender and Humanitarian action”. This project aims to allow our research to benefit society through the organisation of an exhibition with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum. It also has the parallel objective of producing humanitarian historical knowledge with you, our readers, and preserving it within this website.
We are overjoyed at the idea of seeing you again on-line and/or in person in the heart of Geneva very soon!
