The international conference Between Marginal and Mainstream is held at the University of Helsinki on 11–13 March 2026.
You can upload the conference programme as PDF here:
Conference Venues
- Main building Small hall F4050
- Main building F3017
- Main building U4072
- Main building F3020
- Main building Foyer Rectoria
DAY 1 – 11 March 2026
9:30-10:15 Registration and coffee / Main building, small hall lobby
10:15-10:30 Opening words / Main building, small hall F4050
10:30–12:00 Keynote 1 / Chair Stefan Schröder / Main building, small hall F4050
Lauren Kassell (European University Institute): Bedside Medicine in Early Modern England
12:00–13:30 Lunch / Main building Foyer Rectoria
13:30–15:00 Session 1A Religion and folk healing / Chair Cesare Cuttica / Main building, small hall F4050
Jagriti (Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar): State, Religion and Health: A case study of Kashmir Medical Mission, 1863-1904
Ulla Ijäs (Independent Researcher): Pastors wives and medical knowledge in the 19th century Finland
Eduardo Ángel Cruz (KU Leuven): The Saints’ Secret Nurses: Indigenous and Afro-Latin Women Testing Cures in Colonial Miracle Records
13:30–15:00 Session 1B Minds, bodies, and nerves / Chair Edna Huotari / Main building F3017
Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon (Université Paris Nanterre): Irreconcilable experiences? Conflicting sources of medical knowledge and practices in Bernard Mandeville’s Treatise of Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases (1730)
Mona Mannevuo (University of Helsinki): “Neurasthenia is not a new name for hysteria” – Diagnosis of neurasthenia in late nineteenth-century medical literature
Katja Palokangas (University of Jyväskylä): Mental assessments in homicide cases in the 19th century Finland
15:00-15:30 Coffee / Main building, small hall lobby
15:30–17:00 Session 2A Medical Electricity / Chair Eva Johanna Holmberg / Main building, small hall F4050
Soile Ylivuori (University of Helsinki): Experimenting with Eels – Colonial Space and Medical Electricity in the Eighteenth Century
Saara-Maija Kontturi (University of Helsinki): Scientific Optimism, Skepticism, and Developing Methodology in Medical Electricity in Sweden and Finland
Stefan Schröder (University of Helsinki): A Universal Remedy or Bogus? Medical Electricity and its Coverage in Mid-Eighteenth-Century German Newspapers
15:30–17:00 Session 2B Embodied medical knowledge / Chair Dan Blackie / Main building F3017
Tilmann Walter (Independent Scholar): When Clinical Knowledge Became Mainstream: Therapy in the Letters and Consils of the Imperial Physician Johannes Crato (1519–85)
Ùna Faller (École normale supérieure de Lyon): The green-sick body and her embodied knowledge of green sickness, or the ‘disease of virgins’
Edna Huotari (University of Helsinki): The Embodied and Electric patient in Revolutionary France
17:00–19:00 Wine Reception / Main building, small hall lobby
DAY 2– 12 March 2026
10:00–10:30 Coffee / Main building, small hall lobby
10:30–12:00 Keynote 2 / Chair Saara-Maija Kontturi / Main building, small hall F4050
Markku Hokkanen (University of Oulu): Negotiating healing between marginal and mainstream: experimentation and cross-cultural medical encounters in South-Central Africa, c. 1850s-1900s
12:00–13:30 Lunch / Main building Foyer Rectoria
13:30–15:00 Session 3A ELBOW Talks Hybrid Session / Chair Lotta Vuorio / Main building, small hall F4050
Clare Griffin (Indiana University Bloomington): The Science of Unicorns: Early Modern Russia’s Only Drug Trial
Clarice Säävälä (University of Helsinki): “He does me real good by his kindness”: The Role of Sympathy in Healing the Patient in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Marek Maj (European University Institute): Epistemic Encounters in the Nineteenth-Century Polish Countryside
13:30–15:00 Session 3B Between Folk Healing and Medicine / Chair Dan Blackie / Main building F3017
Moshumee Dewoo (University of Helsinki): Animist Healing, European Medicine, and the Third Space of Medical Legitimacy in Southern Africa
Elena Badanai (University of Pisa and University of Florence): From Folklore to Medical Science in Post-Unified Italy
13:30–15:00 Session 3C Surgeons and surgery / Chair Riikka Miettinen / Main building U4072
Anu Lahtinen & Mirkka Lappalainen (University of Helsinki): Craftsmen in Medicine: Barber-surgeons in Early 17th Century Stockholm
Samu Sarviaho (University of Oulu): Barber-surgeons in Transition: Medical Practice and Changes in Treatment in 1800s Finland
15:00–15:30 Coffee / Main building, small hall lobby
15:30–17:00 Session 4A Medical Epistemes / Chair Pieter Dhondt / Main building, small hall F4050
Mursed Alam (University of Gour Banga): Marginal Medicalities from South Asia: Colonial Biopolitics, Decolonial Aporia and Indigenous Survival Epistemes
Claire Crignon (University of Lorraine): Observing Folk Practices and Beliefs About Healing and Curing: The Importance of Bacon’s Natural Histories in Understanding His Skeptical View of Medical Progress (1605-1638)
Shawn M. Phillips (Indiana State University): Experimentation, Morality, & Therapeutics: Mercurial Cures and Shifting Applications from Humoral Theory to Germ Theory
15:30–17:00 Session 4B Ointments and elixirs / Chair Cesare Cuttica / Main building F3017
Aleksi Moine (University of Helsinki): Christ’s Blood and Mary’s Milk – Religion, Ointments and Bodies in 19th-Century Finno-Karelian Healing Incantations
Brian Li (Max Planck Institute): Staving off Hunger for 100 days: A Close Reading of Lapidary Elixirs in the Bencao gangmu
Tarquin Holmes (Independent Postdoctoral Scholar): A Disgusting and useless substance? A Brief History of Hyraceum
18:00 Conference dinner
DAY 3 – 13 March 2026
10:00–10:30 Coffee / Main building, small hall lobby
10:30-12:00 Keynote 3 / Chair Soile Ylivuori / Main building, small hall F4050
Paola Bertucci (Yale University): The Anatomy of the Living: Occupational Health between Medical Knowledge and Statecraft
12:00-13:30 Lunch / Main building Foyer Rectoria
13:30–15:00 Session 5A Drinking health / Chair Stefan Schröder / Main building, small hall F4050
Yiyun Huang (Wuhan University): Panacea or pernicious drug: Situating Chinese Tea in Early Modern European Medicine
François Zanetti (Université Paris Cité): Too good to be true – Debates on evaluation procedures for mineral waters in the 18th c.
13:30–15:00 Session 5B Religion and medicine / Chair Saara-Maija Kontturi / Main building, Studium 1 F3020
Dan Blackie (University of Helsinki): Medicine, Faith, and Disability in Late Georgian England
Auli Saarsalmi-Paalasmaa (Independent Researcher): The Training of Nurses in Seventh-day Adventists’ St. Helena Nursing School
Riikka Miettinen (Tampere University): Medical Pluralism and Religious Intersections in Healing Madness in Early Modern Sweden
15:00–15:30 Coffee / Main building, small hall lobby
15:30–17:00 Session 6A Colonial medicine / Chair Soile Ylivuori / Main building, small hall F4050
Eva Johanna Holmberg (University of Helsinki): Distempered with Greeuous Sicknesses: Healing and Experimenting with the Badly ‘Environed’ Body of Thomas West, Lord De La Warr in Virginia, 1610-11
Delphine Peiretti-Courtis (Aix-Marseille University): A History of Medical Errors : Studies, Experiences, and Care Practices on Black Bodies in the French Colonies of Africa (1780-1910)
Chechesh Kudachinova (East European Studies Institute): Creating Colonial Healing and Making Experiential Knowledge in 17th-Century Settler Siberia
15:30–17:00 Session 6B Natural healing / Chair Anu Lahtinen / Main building, Studium 1 F3020
Eeva Heinonen (University of Helsinki): Unveiling the Materiality of Nature in the Early Modern Medical Discourse
Suvi Rytty (University of Turku): Embodied Experience in Natural Healing Narratives in Early Twentieth-Century Finland
Pieter Dhondt (University of Eastern Finland): Challenging the Orthodoxy of Medical Knowledge by Promoting Homeopathy as an Academic Subject Around 1900
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