Who cares? De la psychiatrie dans l'aire anglophone

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Who Cares? International Conference
History of Psychiatry in the English-speaking world
#2 Theories & Policies
19-21 mars 2026
Salle des conférences du Bâtiment Max WEBER
Université Paris Nanterre
200 avenue de la République
92000 NANTERRE

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: Lunch break (buffet)

2-3.30: 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”
Samantha Hosein (PhD candidate in history, University of the West Indies): “The Decolonization of Mental Healthcare in Trinidad and Tobago, 1957-1962, with a special focus on Dr Earl Lewis and the Caribbean Federation for Mental Health (CFMH)”
Cécile Birks (Senior lecturer in British and Commonwealth studies, Université Paris Nanterre): “The eugenic interlude in South African mental health institutions, 1900-1948”

3.30-3.50 Coffee break

3.50-4.50 : 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”
4.50-5.30 : 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
12-1.30: Back to Nanterre Lunch break (buffet) 

1.30-3.30: 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”
Claire Deligny (Senior lecturer in British studies, Université Paris Nanterre): “War from the wards: the Lancashire asylums and the Great War (1914-1922)”

3.30-3.50 Coffee break

3.50-5.50: 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

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”
Chair: Elisa Chelle (Université Paris Nanterre)
10.15-10.30 Coffee break
10.30-11.30: PANEL 6: Psychiatry and migration
Chair: Elisa Chelle (Université Paris Nanterre)
Léna Monème (PhD candidate in history, University of Luxembourg): “The refugee and immigrant dichotomy in British psychiatry, 1945-1965”
Stéphanie Pache (Associate Professor in gender and equality studies, Université du Québec) : “‘Racism as ‘extreme environment’ : the global psychiatry of Chester M. Pierce’”
11.30-11.45 Closing speech, by the Who Cares committee members
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Conference organisers:
Cécile Birks, Claire Deligny, Laurence Dubois (Observatoire de l’aire britannique, Université Paris Nanterre), Elisabeth Fauquert (ORUS, Université Paris Nanterre) and Laetitia Sansonetti (Prismes, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle).
Scientific committee :
Cécile Birks, Claire Deligny, Laurence Dubois and  Elisabeth Fauquert (Université Paris Nanterre)
Elodie Edwards-Grossi (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL & Institut Universitaire de France)
Hervé Guillemain (Le Mans Université)
Anatole Le Bras (Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines)
Julie Le Gac (Université Paris Nanterre & Institut Universitaire de France)
Fabienne Moine (Université Paris-Est Créteil)
Michel Prum (Université Paris Cité)
Laetitia Sansonetti (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Call for Papers –  International conference Who Cares ? Psychiatry in the English-speaking world
 #2 Theories and Policies
Université Paris Nanterre
19-21 March 2026

Who Cares? Psychiatry in the English-speaking world:
People and Places
International Conference Université Paris Nanterre 6-8 February 2025
 

Organising committee: Cécile Birks, Claire Deligny, Laurence Dubois, Elisabeth Fauquert (Université Paris Nanterre) & Laetitia Sansonetti (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle).
Scientific committee: Cécile Birks (Université Paris Nanterre), Claire Deligny (Université Paris Nanterre), Laurence Dubois (Université Paris Nanterre), Elisabeth Fauquert (Université Paris Nanterre), Hervé Guillemain (Université du Mans), Julie Le Gac (Université Paris Nanterre & Institut Universitaire de France), Fabienne Moine (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Michel Prum (Université Paris Cité) &  Laetitia Sansonetti (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle).

DAY 1 : THURSDAY, 6 February 2025
Salle des conférences, Bâtiment Max WEBER, Université Paris Nanterre

8:45 – 9:15 Welcome & opening of the conference
9:15 – 9:30 Opening speech, Françoise KRÁL (director of the CREA research laboratory, Université Paris Nanterre)
9:30 – 10:30 KEYNOTE 1 Rory DU PLESSIS (University of Pretoria): “Humanising stories of care and connection: placing the chronic patients of the Fort England Hospital, South Africa, 1890-1950”
Chair: Michel PRUM (Université Paris Cité)

10:30 – 10:50 Coffee Break

10:50 – 12:50 Panel 1 – Racial bias, migration and psychiatry
Chair: Michel PRUM (Université Paris Cité)
10:50 – 11:10 Cécile BIRKS (Université Paris Nanterre): “ Segregation and racial bias in the Cape Colony mental institutions, 1890-1910” 
11:10 – 11:30 Samantha HOSEIN  (University of the West Indies): “St Ann’s Mental Asylum: External and Internal Determinants of Mental Healthcare Development in Trinidad and Tobago, 1900- 1939”
11:30 – 11:50 Léna MONEME (University of Luxembourg): “The repatriations of immigrant patients from the UK: administrative practices and psychiatric perspectives (1950s-1970s)”
11:50 – 12:10 Elodie EDWARDS-GROSSI (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL & Institut Universitaire de France) & Christopher D.E. WILLOUGHBY (University of Nevada, Las Vegas): “Thinking through carceral logics in psychiatry: revisiting race and marginality in the U.S. today”
12:10 – 12:50  Q&A

12:50-2  Lunch Break

2 – 3:30 Panel 2 – Outside the walls of mental health institutions
Chair: Elisabeth FAUQUERT (Université Paris Nanterre)
2 – 2:20 Laurence GERVAIS (Université Paris Nanterre): “Queering mental health: From pathologisation and backlash to mutual-aid and radical care”
2:20 – 2:40 Cecilia SMITH (Université Côte d’Azur): “Homelessness, psychiatric care and deinstitutionalization in Greater Boston since the 1960s”
2:40 – 3 Rebecca WYNTER (University of Amsterdam): “People Out of Place: Policing Mental Distress on London’s Streets since 1890”
3 – 3:30  Q&A

3:30 – 3:45 Coffee Break

3:45 – 5:45 Panel 3 – Psychiatry and war

Chair: Hervé GUILLEMAIN (Université du Mans)
3:45 – 4:05 Rachel DITCHFIELD (University of Liverpool & the Imperial War Museum): “The impact of the First World War on the therapeutic spaces of Bethlem Royal Hospital”
4:05 – 4:25  Rob ELLIS (Manchester Metropolitan University) & Ute OSWALD (University of Huddersfield): “Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health. Belgians in British Asylums 1914-1918”
4:25 – 4:45 Julie LE GAC (Université Paris Nanterre & Institut Universitaire de France): “‘His Patient is the Army rather than the Individual’: Military Psychiatrists and British soldiers during the Second World War”
4:45 – 5:15 Q&A

5:15-5:30 – Break

5:30 – 6:15: Poster Presentation in the hall (Master’s Students from Paris Nanterre and Sorbonne Nouvelle)
6:15 Cocktail reception

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DAY 2 : FRIDAY, 7 February 2025
Salle des conférences, Bâtiment Max WEBER, Université Paris Nanterre

9 – 9:15  Welcome coffee

9:15 – 10:15 KEYNOTE 2 Susan HOGAN (University of Derby & Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham): “Therapeutic Arts in Britain with a Focus on Britain’s First Arts-Based Therapeutic Community: Withymead”
Chair: Charlotte GOULD (Université Paris Nanterre)
10:15 – 11:15 Panel 4 – Art and creativity
Chair: Charlotte GOULD (Université Paris Nanterre)
10:15 – 10:35 Rachel WILSON (Goldsmiths, University of London): “Institutional Psychotherapy: mobilising aesthetic practice in contemporary mental health institutions”
10:35 – 10:55 Fabienne MOINE (Université Paris-Est Créteil): “‘The silver lining of the dark cloud of insanity’: asylums and ‘lunatic poetry’” (Britain, 1840s-1870s)
10:55 – 11:15  Q&A

11:15 – 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 – 1  Panel 5 – Conceptualising places of care
Chair: Naomi TOTH (Université Paris Nanterre & Institut Universitaire de France)
11:30 – 11:50 Nicolas BOILEAU & Victoria FERNANDEZ (Aix-Marseille Université): “Don’t we all care? Thinking about the hospital as a place of commonality rather than as a common place”
11:50 – 12:10 Susan BARRETT (Université Bordeaux Montaigne): “Lost in Transition: Who cares about mentally-ill young adults?”
12:10 – 12:30 Louise HIDE (Birkbeck, University of London).: “‘Too passive to present any problem to management’: the psychiatric hospital as a technology of control”
12:30 – 1 Q&A

1 – 2:15 Lunch break

2:15 – 4:15 Panel 6 – Places of care in England 
Chair: Anatole LE BRAS (Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines)
2:15 – 2:35 Hilary MARLAND (University of Warwick): “‘Never in asylum before’: Mental Disorder and Childbirth in Colney Hatch Asylum, London, 1890s-1920s”
2:35 – 2:55 Han DEE (Queen Mary University of London): “Broadmoor: ‘It’s A Good Home Ain’t It?’ Approaching location to discover neglected histories”
2:55 – 3:15 Leonard SMITH, (University of Birmingham): “Family, Domesticity and the English Private Madhouse, 1600 – 1875”
3:15 – 3:35 Claire DELIGNY & Laurence DUBOIS (Université Paris Nanterre):   “‘A kind and judicious chaplain may be a valuable auxiliary to the physician’ : Chaplains at Hanwell and Rainhill asylums (1838-1886)”
3:35 – 4:15 Q&A

4:15 – 4:30 Coffee break

4:30 – 6  Panel 7 – Early Labellings
Chair: Laetitia SANSONETTI (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)
4:30 – 4:50 Louise FANG (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord): “Musgrave v. Mounson (1623): exploring the shortcomings of early modern inquisitions of lunacy”
4:50 – 5:10 Beatrice FUGA (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle): “Compulsive, Convulsive, Conniving. Eighteenth-century Nymphomaniacs in French and English Medical Texts”
5:10 – 5:30 Mathilde VIALARD (Université de Bourgogne): “‘Who cares’ about Hypochondria? An Overview of an Often-Forgotten Mental Disorder”
5:30 – 6 Q&A

6 – 6:40 Psychiatry on screen Chair : Serge CHAUVIN (Université Paris Nanterre)
6 – 6:20 Jocelyn DUPONT (Université de Perpignan): “Psychiatric Spaces in Early 1960s American Cinema”
6:20 – 6:40 Q&A
6:40 – 7 Closing speech, Who Cares? committee members
 
Dinner in town (conference delegates only)

DAY 3: SATURDAY, 8 February
Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, Bd de l’Hôpital, 75013 PARIS
10-12 noon  Guided tour and conference (in English) of the  Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (conference delegates only)