Professor Matthew Stibbe’s talk at National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland, 5 May 2022

Professor Matthew Stibbe to host online talk on Michael E. DeBakey lecture in the History of Medicine: A Laboratory of Humanitarianism: Military and Civilian Captivity during the First World War at the National Library of Medicine, Maryland, on 5 May, 14:00 EST / 19:00 GMT.

 

Scholarship on captivity in modern conflicts has mostly focused on its violent aspects and on the very real physical and mental suffering of prisoners of war. This presentation will instead show why the First World War provided a unique laboratory for experimenting with different kinds of humanitarian assistance to those experiencing prolonged incarceration and separation from their families.

Building on Dr. Stibbe’s recently published research, his talk will examine three different but overlapping approaches to humanitarian assistance: relief work, efforts to enforce and enhance existing international conventions, and pressures placed on captor nations to come to prisoner exchange agreements. The presentation will conclude by examining the legacy of these developments for cultural and medical understandings of wartime captivity in the inter-war period and beyond.

 

Further details can be found here.