Canadian Association for the History of Nursing

Association Canadienne pour l’histoire du Nursing

15-17 June 2012, Medicine Hat, Alberta

The 2012 Annual CAHN/ACHN Conference, to be held in Medicine Hat, Alberta on June 15-17, marks the 25th anniversary of our association.  Founded in 1987, CAHN/ACHN has an ongoing commitment to stimulate and promote historical scholarship of nursing and health.  We are pleased to invite you to this conference.

The conference theme is:  Places and People’s Health: Exploring Nursing in Diverse Contexts.  We welcome papers that explore diversity and contingency of nursing knowledge and practice. Aiming at a critical understanding of connections between place and practice, the conference seeks to examine the history of nursing and health care in diverse geographic, social, and political contexts, including rural and remote locations, specialty areas, and various communities.  How did communities engage with health politics or respond to professional claims? What tensions arose as health services had to be domains? How did local, regional, and global contexts of health care shape nursing? Abstracts addressing other questions are also welcome.  The conference will bring together scholars, professionals, and students from different fields and various areas of nursing and health care history. Longstanding members are especially invited to attend.

The Hannah Lecturer at the conference will be Carol Helmstadter, Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto.  She is an award winning nurse historian and expert on the history of 19th century nursing.  She has published widely on Florence Nightingale and nursing in Victorian Britain, including a recent chapter in Notes on Nightingale (2010). Her new book, Nursing before Nightingale, co-authored with Judith Godden, will be released in November 2011 by Ashgate.

Please summit your one page abstract (350 words max.) and one page CV for consideration by Dec. 1. 2011 to geertje.boschma@nursing.ubc.ca.  Submissions by email are strongly encouraged.  If submitting by mail. please send one original and 3 blind copies to Geertje Boschma, UBC School of Nursing, T201, 2211 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver V6T 2B5, Canada. Abstracts will be peer-reviewed. Notification of acceptance will be sent out in Feb. 2012. All presenters must be members of CAHN/ACHN.

For information on local arrangements you may contact Florence Melchior florence@mhc.ab.ca or visit our website at http://cahn-achn.ca/