Participant Info
- First Name
- Dora
- Last Name
- Vargha
- Country
- United Kingdom
- State
- d.vargha@exeter.ac.uk
- Affiliation
- University of Exeter
- Website URL
- https://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/history/staff/vargha/
- Keywords
- Cold War, History of medicine, History of science, History of technology, Socialism, Eastern Europe, Global health, Vaccination, Epidemics, Disease, Polio, Disability, Socialism, International organizations, Socialist internationalism, Hungary
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
In my research, publications and teaching, I take the socialist world as starting point to approach geographically and conceptually broad questions of global health and biomedical research in the Cold War era. I investigate when local and national concerns of public health shift to becoming global issues; what responsibilities and expectations are formed in the process between members of society, health officials and the state; how those expectations reflect in the way global health policies are negotiated; and how medical knowledge and technology interact in the nexus of geopolitical and postcolonial relationships. I aim to understand the politics of global health by analyzing and connecting its histories at the institutional, national and local level.
I have published on vaccine development in Eastern Europe, the Cold War politics of polio, disability in communist Hungary, and epidemic narratives in current global health policies.
I am Lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter, based at the History Department and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. Since 2017 I have been co-editor of Social History of Medicine journal.
- Recent Publications
Polio Across the Iron Curtain: Hungary’s Cold War with an Epidemic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Global Health Histories Series, 2018. Open Access.
“The Socialist World in Global Polio Eradication”. Revue d-Études Comparatives Est-Ouest (RECEO), Vol 49, No.1, 2018
“Socialist Utopia in Practice: Everyday Life and Medical Authority in a Hungarian Polio Hospital. Social History of Medicine, Volume 31, Issue 2, 1 May 2018
“Polio and Disability in Hungary” in Catherine Kudlick, Kim Nielsen, and Michael Rembis eds. Oxford Handbook of Disability History. Oxford University Press, 2018
“Vaccination and the communist state: polio in Eastern Europe” in Stuart Blume, Peter Greenough and Christine Holmberg eds. The Politics of Vaccination: A Global History, Studies for the Society of the Social History of Medicine. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2017
“Grey-market Medicines: diphtheria antitoxin and the decay of biomedical infrastructure. The Lancet, Vol 389, April 29, 2017 (with Jeremy Greene)
“Beyond Liberal Internationalism” Journal of Contemporary European History, vol. 25, Part 2, May 2016 (with Ana Antic and Johanna Conterio)
“Between East and West: Polio Vaccination Across the Iron Curtain in Cold War Hungary” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 88, no. 2., Summer 2014
- Media Coverage
- BBC, The Conversation, El País, The Guardian
- Social Media
- Country Focus
- Global, Hungary,
- Expertise by Geography
- Eastern Europe
- Expertise by Chronology
- Modern, 20th century, 21st century
- Expertise by Topic
- Children & Youth, Disability, Local & Regional, Medicine, Politics, Science, Technology
