User:MartinPoulter Jisc/The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group

The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group was established in October 2010 as part of the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London. Funded by a Strategic Award from the Wellcome Trust, the purpose of the group is to record, and make widely available for education, research and outreach purposes, the voices of those who have contributed, in diverse ways, to the development of modern biomedicine. ‘Biomedicine’ is interpreted broadly, to range from laboratory sciences, through every medical and surgical specialty, to large-scale public health and beyond, into medical policy and politics. The voices will be recorded using recognised oral history methodology: Witness Seminars (effectively a form of open peer review) and/or individual interviews, and will include a wide variety of practitioners, researchers, policy-makers, and others.

The project will seek multidisciplinary input from historians, ethicists, and scientists from a wide range of biomedical areas, in order to produce a published resource in print and digital media for the benefit of researchers and historians both nationally and internationally.

The topics covered will fall broadly into five themes: clinical genetics, neuroscience, global health and infectious diseases, medical technologies and ethics of research and practice.

The project advisory board contains experts in these areas and representatives of several historical and scientific organisations, including the Royal Society, the Royal College of Physicians, the Physiological Society and the British Pharmacological Society.

Today's Neuroscience, Tomorrow's History
The result of a Wellcome Trust Public Engagement grant to Professor Tilli Tansey (QMUL) and Professor Leslie Iversen (Oxford), the Today's Neuroscience, Tomorrow's History project was designed to produce historically significant material by recording some of the leading figures in the field of neuroscience. Three major thematic topics were identified: neuropharmacology, psychiatry/neuropsychology, and neuroimaging.

Origins
The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group originated as The Wellcome Trust’s History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group, and later functioned as the Academic Unit of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. It was established at the Royal College of Physicians in 1990 and comprised Sir Christopher Booth (the Harveian Librarian) and Professor Tilli Tansey, charged to devise ways of stimulating historians, scientists & clinicians to discuss, preserve and write the history of recent biomedicine. The Witness Seminars began in 1993, with regular meetings being held (roughly four per year, with most edited transcripts appearing within 18 months). The Group's activities were originally overseen by a Programme Committee, which included professional historians of medicine, practising scientists and clinicians. From 2000–2010 it was a constituent part of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. In October 2010 it moved to the School of History, QMUL.