Workshop History of Bodily Integrity 22 June 2023

On 22 June 2023, a workshop on ‘The History of Bodily Integrity’ was organized. You can find the programme here.

The body has become an important category of analysis in histories of medicine, and increasingly also in cultural and political history more broadly. One new avenue of research is the theme of bodily integrity, which intersects with the history of ethics, medicine and human rights. It is particularly in the twentieth century that the issue of bodily integrity and autonomy has come to occupy such a central role in regard to discussions on human rights, women’s rights and patients’ ethics. This workshop brought together historians who are working on the theme of bodily integrity (a concept which overlaps with the notions of bodily autonomy or human dignity). The goal of the workshop was to discuss this theme in an informal setting with short, pre-circulated papers.