Profile

Biography

BA (St Stephen's College, University of Delhi), MA (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), PhD (SOAS, London)

Sanjoy Bhattacharya is Director of the Centre for Global Health Histories and a Professor in the History of Medicine. He specialises in the medical, environmental, political and social history of nineteenth and twentieth century South Asia, as well as the history of international and global health programmes.

Sanjoy is deeply involved in the World Health Organization’s Global Health Histories project (GHH), since its inception in 2004. He has worked closely with the WHO Department of Knowledge Management and Sharing on this initiative, which has led to GHH being made an ‘Office Specific Expected Result’ (an official WHO activity). Sanjoy’s involvement in this context has allowed him to work on history and policy linkages, on inter-disciplinary perspectives in medical history and humanities, and on independent and critical assessments of global health policy.

Sanjoy is editor of the journal Medical History, a world leading publication in its field. Published by Cambridge University Press from 2012 onwards, with generous support from the Wellcome Trust, Medical History showcases the best scholarship and fosters interest in the history of medicine and health worldwide. Sanjoy also co-edits New Perspectives in South Asian History, which is an established series of monographs published by Orient Blackswan India Ltd.

These editorial responsibilities have allowed him to act on his strong belief in the value of international partnerships as a driver for the creation of fresh analytical frameworks and new kinds of historical work. Sanjoy has established links with scholars and health officials in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, India, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Sri Lanka and the USA. The Centre for Global Health Histories at the University of York will provide a further boost to his national and international collaborative activities.

Sanjoy enjoys working with academics keen to push disciplinary boundaries and developing exciting, new interdisciplinary methodologies. He has taught courses directed at medical, science, arts and humanities students, and has worked closely with clinicians, public health specialists, scientists and government administrators on research projects.

Sanjoy is deeply involved in a variety of outreach activities and has appeared in a variety of radio and TV programmes. He is committed to helping the development of history teaching aids for schools and has recently been a consultant to a BAFTA award winning web-based module on the history of smallpox prepared by Timelines TV.

Publications

Selected publications

Books

• Expunging Variola: The Control and Eradication of Smallpox in India, 1947-1977. New Delhi and London: Orient Longman India and Sangam Books, 2006.
• Fractured States: Smallpox, Public Health and Vaccination Policy in British India, 1800-1947. New Delhi and London: Orient Longman India and Sangam Books, 2005.
• Propaganda and Information in Eastern India, 1939-45: A Necessary Weapon of War. London: Curzon/Routledge, 2001.

Edited books

• with Sharon Messenger, The Global Eradication of Smallpox. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2010.
• with Sharon Messenger and Caroline Overy, Social Determinants of Health: Assessing Theory, Policy and Practice. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2010.
• with Harold J. Cook and Anne Hardy, History of the Social Determinants of Health: Global Histories, Contemporary Debates. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2009.

Articles and book chapters

• 'Reflections on the Eradication of Smallpox'. The Lancet 375 (2010): 1602-3.
• with Niels Brimnes, 'Simultaneously Global and Local: Reassessing Smallpox Vaccination and Its Spread, 1789–1900'. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 83, no. 1 (2009): 1-16.
• with Rajib Dasgupta, 'A Tale of Two Global Health Programmes: Smallpox Eradication’s Lessons for the Anti-Polio Campaign in India'. American Journal of Public Health 99, no. 7 (2009): 1176-84.
• 'The World Health Organization and Global Smallpox Eradication'. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 62, no. 10 (2008): 909-12.
• 'Contibuicoes multifacetadas: trabalhadores da saude e a erradicacao da variola na India'. Ciencia & Saude Coletiva 13, no. 3 (2008): 955-64.
• 'The Local Bases of Global Public Health: Complexities and Opportunities'. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 86, no. 3 (2008): 163.
• 'Struggling to a Monumental Triumph: Re-Assessing the Final Stages of the Smallpox Eradication Program in India, 1960-1980'. História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos 14, no. 3 (2007): 1113-29.
• 'Mission Impossible?: Smallpox Eradication, the World Health Organization and South Asia'. Biblio: A Review of Books 12, no. 9 & 10 (2007): 31-2.

Edited journals

• with Niels Brimnes, Reassessing Smallpox Vaccination, 1789-1900. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 83, no. 1 (2009).
• Epidemics in South Asian History. Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai, India) 43, no. 12 & 13 (2008): 39-78.

Websites

• Smallpox History

 

Research

Overview

Sanjoy is a historian of medicine, South Asia and imperialism since c.1800. His research interests include:

• Medicine, health, environment, science and technology in South Asia since c.1800
• International and global health programmes since 1850
• The South Asian diaspora since 1800
• The British empire since 1800

Sanjoy's first book deals with official propaganda in Eastern India during the Second World War. Medical and food aid to control epidemic disease and tackle acute malnutrition were an important component of these information control policies, which stoked his interest in medical history. This led Sanjoy to embark on a major Wellcome Trust-funded project to investigate the efforts to control and eradicate smallpox in India between 1800 and 1980.

Two major monographs resulted from this work. The first deals with efforts to control smallpox in colonial India, whilst the second, dealing with the period between 1947 and 1977, provides the first detailed study of the Indian chapters of the global smallpox eradication programme. Both publications examine the unfolding of immunization policies at the different levels of sub-continental administration, developments in vaccine research and their impact on vaccination strategies in the field, the role of international health agencies in buttressing work carried out by national and local government authorities, and the complexity of social and official responses to policies of surveillance, isolation and vaccination regimes deployed in urban and rural contexts.

Sanjoy has followed this work up with a history of the global eradication of smallpox. Funded by a major Wellcome Trust grant, this has taken the form of a book, as well as a website that will go live soon and provide access to recordings of interviews carried out with a range of ‘smallpox warriors’. Additional outputs have taken the shape of peer reviewed articles and a monograph project titled The Last Bastion: The Eradication of Variola Major from Bangladesh and South Asia.

Current projects

Sanjoy is currently working with Dr. Andrew Hull of Swansea University to complete a book dealing with the employment of Indian medical professionals by the United Kingdom's National Health Service between 1950 and 1980. Funded by the Wellcome Trust, this work examines the patterns of migration of medical professionals from India to the UK, the official responses to this ‘brain drain’ in the UK and South Asia, and the experience of these qualified migrants whilst working within the UK’s NHS.

Sanjoy has also started to research the history of primary health care and rural health facilities in India and Sri Lanka. This work includes an assessment of different national projects, their implementation in the states/provinces and districts, and the wide-ranging impact of foreign aid packages on the development of facilities for universal healthcare. This project will also include an in-depth examination of the complex engagement of these national and local initiatives with successive World Health Organization-led global movements for primary health care.

External activities

Memberships

• Fellow, Royal Asiatic Society
• Member of Core Editorial Committee and External Advisor, Global Health Histories Initiative, World Health Organisation, Geneva headquarters.
• Trustee and member of the executive committee of the Society of the Social History of Medicine (from 2009 onwards).
• Member, American Association for the History of Medicine
• Member, Asian Society for the History of Medicine
• Member, Global Health Trust/Human Resources for Health and Development: A Joint Learning Experience/a Rockefeller Foundation-led international initiative
• Affiliate, History and Philosophy of Science Department, University of Cambridge, UK.
• UNE Asia Centre Affiliated Fellow, Asia Research Centre, University of New England, Armidale, Australia.
• Research Associate, Green College, University of Oxford, UK.
  

Editorial duties

• Editor of the journal Medical History (Cambridge University Press)
• Editor of Wellcome History (2002-2012)
• Founding and lead editor of academic monograph series titled 'New Perspectives in South Asian History' (Orient Blackswan India Ltd)
• Member of the editorial board of The Handbook of Oriental Studies, 2nd Section (South Asia) by Brill Publishers, Leiden, The Netherlands
• Member of editorial board of the journal Social History of Medicine (May 2004 to February 2009)
• Member of editorial board of The Dictionary of Medical Biography by Greenwood Publishing, Portsmouth, USA, 2006

Media coverage

• Chapter titled 'Avoid' in book titled Public Health Campaigns: Getting the Message Across (Geneva: WHO, 2010). This 183 page book showcases WHO, national government and international agency posters dealing with public health issues, and has been published in English, Chinese, French, Spanish and Russian.
• Contributed in 2009 to a short feature film on 'Vaccines and Vaccination' prepared by Associated Press UK (Researcher and Producer: Ms. Havovi Tood).
• Led a 'perspectives tour', on 9 May 2008, of the Wellcome Trust's permanent exhibitions located at 183 Euston Road, London.
• Participant in BBC Radio 4 programme dealing with the Bengal Famine of the 1940s, which is part of a series titled The Things We Forgot to Remember presented by Michael Portillo, on 7 January 2008.
• Participant in LBC radio's 'Plague Week', which was part of the channel's Nick Ferarri at Breakfast programme, between 31 July and 3 August 2007; I appeared on the programme on Friday 3 August, on an episode dealing with smallpox.
• Provided a recorded interview on malaria in 2007 for a permanent audio-visual display at the Wellcome Collections in 183 Euston Road, London.
• Participant in BBC Radio 4 programme titled 'The Search For Immunisation', which was part of the In Our Time series presented by Melvyn Bragg, on 20 April 2006.
  

Teaching

Postgraduate

Global Visions & Local Actions: The History and Politics of International Health