Communicating the History of Medicine offers a collection of case studies on academic outreach from historical and current perspectives. It questions the kind of linear thinking often found in policy or research assessment, instead offering a nuanced picture of both the promises and pitfalls of engaging audiences for research in the humanities.

List of figuresList of tables1 Introduction: audiences and stakeholders in the history of medicine – Solveig Jülich and Sven Widmalm2 Creating reflective citizen-physicians: teaching medical history to medical students – Frank Huisman3 Feeling great? Practice, institutionalization and disciplinary context of history of medicine in Germany – Ylva Söderfeldt and Matthis Krischel4 Writing history as it happens: the historian’s dilemmas in a time of health-care reform – Beatrix Hoffman5 The audiences of eugenics: historiographical and research political reflections – Lene Koch6 Striking a chord: physician-publics, citizen-audiences and a half-century of health care debates in Canada – Sasha Mullally and Greg Marchildon7 Mansions in the Orchard: architecture, asylum and community in twentieth-century mental health care – Sarah Chaney and Jennifer Walke8 Swedish sex education films and their audiences: representations, address and assumptions about influence – Elisabet Björklund9 On ‘the use and abuse’ of medical history ‘for life’: a disrupted digression on productive disorder, disorderly pleasure, allegorical properties and scatter – Michael Sappol10 Audiences and the history of medicine – Ludmilla JordanovaIndex

This collection explores the history of medicine’s relationships with its audiences, from the early twentieth century to the present. Throughout, the authors discuss how historians of medicine and other humanities disciplines have interacted with – and impacted – their audiences. Topics examined across the ten chapters include medical education, policy making, exhibitions and museums, and film and television.Historians have always interacted with a variety of audiences and there is a common desire for research to appeal to broader audiences with impact beyond the humanities. For historians of medicine, these often include: government committees and commissions dealing with ethical issues in biomedicine; journalists asking for historical perspectives on new medical discoveries – as well as abuses and controversies; museum curators and visitors; healthcare practitioners and students and sometimes even medical researchers utilising historical material.By examining a range of case studies on academic outreach, Communicating the history of medicine seeks to challenge the idea that communication between researchers and their audiences is unidirectional. By employing a media theoretical perspective, this volume discusses how historians can create impact with audiences for academic knowledge production via ‘audiencing’.