Chair: Susan Lederer
Panelists:
Kerri Inglis
Safua Akeli Amaama
W. Matt Cavert
The three members of this panel will draw on their areas of expertise to discuss major issues involving the history of medicine and health in the Pacific region.
Kerri Inglis, from the University of Hawai'i Hilo, specialises in research in the history of health, disease, and medicine, especially as it pertains to Hawai'i and the Pacific, within a global context. She has devoted her career to studying the history of leprosy in Hawai'i and has conducted extensive research on patients' experiences at Kalaupapa Peninsula on Molokai prior to 1900.
Safua Akeli Amaama, the former Head of History and Pacific Cultures at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, who has recently taken up a new role in Germany at the Üebersee-Museum in Bremen, has a particular interest in Pacific-New Zealand relations and has also studied the development of public health care in Samoa during the twentieth century, including the colonial organisation of leprosy care during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
William Cavert, from the University of Hawai'i West O'ahu, is an expert on the French colonial Pacific. He has published scholarly articles on the history of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Tahiti and an outbreak of bubonic plague in New Caledonia around 1900. Cavert has also analysed different responses to the 1918 influenza pandemic in other Pacific islands, including American Samoa, and has examined lessons learned from the 1918 pandemic for responses in different territories, including Hawai'i, to the recent COVID pandemic.
This public panel discussions is part of the 27th International Congress of History of Science and Technology (ICHST), which is taking place at the University of Otago from 29 June - 5 July.
