Professor Alison Downham Moore

Position

Professor of History & Medical Humanities in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts.

Biography

Prof Moore is a medical humanities scholar and historian of diachronic and global medical history. She has published widely on the history of French and German psychiatry and medicine, the transfer of medical ideas between Europe, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent,  and the long global history of sexuality, gender, ageing and medicine. She has also written about historical theory, genocide historiographic debates, the work of Michel Foucault, and the history of medical ideas about digestion and diet. In addition to her humanities and business/management qualifications, she studied non-award biomedical sciences at the University of New England, to enrich her expertise in histories of biology, health, nutrition and disease.

Prof Moore is Chair of the University's Professoriate Leadership Group (PLG), and the academic member of the University's Board of Trustees. Externally, she is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Australian Feminist Studies, and a recent guest editor of the Journal of Aging Studies.

She is author of The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing: A History (Oxford University Press,  2022), and is now completing another individual research monograph entitled The Gendering of Ageing in the Emergence of Biomedicine, contracted to Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Elements in Health Humanities). With Elizabeth Stephens (UQ) and Katie Sutton (ANU), she is co-editing the Routledge volume, Embodied Knowledge in the Health and Medical Humanities: Australian Perspectives.

She is involved in collaborative projects on  the history of preventative health and on the history and current practice of gynaecological surgeries worldwide and in diverse patient groups.

She is an experienced research and career mentor and is happy to provide research, teaching or career mentoring support to emergent scholars in any humanities, social science  or health discipline.

She welcomes prospective honours, masters and PhD projects in any area of the medical/health humanities and social sciences, global cultural or intellectual history, any area of historiography or historical theory, any area of sexuality or gender studies, and any area of history of medicine, science, sport or health across time and place.

She welcomes meaningful research collaboration with scholars of any level of experience, from any scholarly discipline, and from all parts of the world. Corresponding scholars are welcome to write to her in English, French or German.

Some of her recent podcast interviews, video abstracts and video/audio recordings of talks include:

• 2024 Audio Podcast Interview with Jana Byars about my open-acess book The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing: History. Part of the New Books in History podcast.
• 2022 Annual Keynote Lecture of the Australasian Health and Medical Humanities Network, University of Queensland, 'Gender in Medicine and Health'.

Research Interests

• History of medicine
• Medical and health humanities and social sciences
• History and current practices of gynaecology, reproductive and sexual medicine
• History and culture of preventative health
• Women’s and gender-diverse peoples’ health in multi-disciplinary collaborative research

Committees

• Board of Trustees, and its People & Culture committee
• Professoriate Leadership Group
• Research Committee
• University Mentoring Scheme
• School of Humanities and Communication Arts Mentor
• Franklin Leadership Mentor for women in health research

Memberships

• Elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
• Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK)
• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Senior Alumni Fellow (EU)
• Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg Alumni Fellow (Germany)
• Advance HE Senior Teaching Fellow (UK)
• Australasian Health and Medical Humanities Network, member
• Australian and New Zealand Medical History Network, member
• Australian Historical Association, member
• Australian Women's History Network, member

Awards and Recognition

• University Medal and Philip Erdos Prize for Best History Honours Thesis, University of Sydney 1995-02-01
• Visiting Scholar grant from the Society for the Study of French History 2017-03-15
• Grant-in-Aid from the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality for travel relating to research on gay SM subcultures in the U.S. 2002-09-01
• Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP 190101457 2019-01-02
• Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg Research Fellowship 2019-01-02
• Humanities and Communication Arts (WSU) Researcher of the Year (traditional) 2019-06-01
• Humanities and Communication Arts (WSU) Research Collaboration Funding: Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture 2018-06-01
• Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (UTS) Research Development Grant: The Forgotten History of Cultural Historiography 2009-06-01
• Early Career Researcher Development Grant, UQ (unable to be accepted due to change of post) 2008-05-01
• Australian Academy of the Humanities Travel Grant: Sadism, Masochism and Gender Identification in France, 1890-1925 2006-07-01
• Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (USA): Granti-in-aid: Gay SM Subcultures in the U.S. 2002-07-01
• Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies Marie Curie Senior Fellowship 2020-01-01
• Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Alumni Fellowship 2021: Global Entanglements in the History of Gynaecology 2021-01-06
• Advance HE Senior Fellowship in teaching leadership and mentoring

Qualifications

• PhD in History of Psychiatry (University of Sydney)
• Bachelor of Arts Honours, Class 1, University medal (University of Sydney)
• Graduate Certificate of Tertiary Education Management (University of Melbourne)
• Certificate of Professional Advancement (London School of Economics & Political Science)
• Certificate in Governance for Not-for-Profits (Governance Institute of Australia)

Research & Publications

Most of Prof Moore's publications can be freely downloaded from her Academia.edu profile(Opens in a new window)

Contact Details