Agenda
Call for Papers – Conference ‘How did we lift the burden? Infectious Disease Mortality in the Western and Non-Western World (1800-now)’ – deadline 31 March 2025
On 28 and 29 August 2025, the COST-Action network GREATLEAP, in collaboration with the Radboud University Nijmegen, the HiDo network, and the IUSSP Panel ‘Epidemics and Contagious Diseases: The Legacy of the Past’. The conference serves as a closing event of the NWO-funded research project ‘Lifting the burden of disease. The modernisation of health in the Netherlands: Amsterdam, 1854-1926’.
Mortality and health are always, not only in the nineteenth century, the outcomes of complex and multi-causal processes. In this historic extension of life expectancy beyond age 30-40 many factors have played a role, ranging from increased personal hygiene, public health policies, higher incomes, improved nutrition, reduced exposure to infectious diseases, behavioural change, infant feeding practices, and improved education for the majority of the population. How did these factors interact and enhance each other? In recent years there has been a particular stress on sanitary interventions, such as piped water and sewerage. However, reduced infant mortality levels can often not be linked to the instalment of piped water, moreover, mortality often declined before these sanitary innovations became available.
The organisers would like to encourage paper authors to contribute to the debate in this international conference. Welcome are all sorts of contributions, theoretical, empirical and methodological. Papers from areas and regions of Europe and the world that not belong to the so-called frontrunners in mortality decline in the north-western part of Europe are particularly welcome. Abstracts should be submitted ultimately 31 March 2025.
The conference also marks the end of the academic career of Professor Angélique Janssens, who directed the research project. The conference will therefore be concluded by a farewell reception.
