Dr. M.S. (Manon) Parry – Director UvA

Manon S. Parry, PhD, is an historian of medicine and exhibition curator, specializing in the uses of the humanities for health and wellbeing. She is Professor of Medical history at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (VU), and Associate Professor in American Studies and Public History at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She is a member of the World Health Organization’s new Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural and Cultural Insights, and co-author, with Nancy Tomes, of the first historical report published by the Behavioural and Cultural Insights Unit at WHO/Europe (“Infodemics in Historical Perspective,” 2022). She leads the MA History: Medical and Health Humanities at the VU and directs the PULSE Network for Health Humanities.

Dr. E. (Erin) la Cour – Co-Director

Dr. Erin La Cour is an Assistant Professor in English literature and Visual Culture at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her published research focuses on both the intermediality and mediality of comics in several socio-historical cultural milieux, and most recently on Graphic Medicine. She has also co-edited four comics studies collections, Comics and Power: Representing and Questioning Culture, Subjects, and Communities (Cambridge Scholars, 2015) and “Comics in Art/Art in Comics” (Image [&] Narrative, 2016), and the forthcoming “Graphic Medicine” (Biography, 2022) and Key Terms in Comics Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). She is also a Comenius Fellow of The Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO), for which she conducted the project “Opening a Dialogue about mental health through Comics and Creative Writing.”

Dr. R. (Rebecca) Wynter – Coordinator

Rebecca is a historian of medicine and of Quakers. Her research and publications centre on the history of psychiatry, mental health, neurosurgery, neurodiversity, and First World War medicine and disability. She has worked with museums, developing and co-curating exhibitions, and with community-based groups on public history projects.

A. (Arjan) Nuijten MA

rjan started his study of History in 2007 at the University of Utrecht, where he gained his Bachelor in 2011. During his Bachelor, he also studied at the Freie Universität Berlin through the European Erasmus program. Back in the Netherlands, Arjan proceeded with the Master International Relations in Historical Perspective at the University of Utrecht and gained an eye for the history of intoxicants and drug policy.

Since January 2016, Arjan is part of the Imperative of Regulation project in which his research focus is on local drug practices and local drug policies in the Netherlands since the Second World War. His research shows how different Dutch cities dealt with emerging drug use in their own pace and how many elements of Dutch drug policy were created and contested from bottom-up.