Prof. dr. Manon Parry is an historian of medicine and exhibition curator, specialising in the use of the humanities for health and wellbeing. She is Professor of Medical History at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (chair funded by the Stichting Historia Medicinae), and Associate Professor, American Studies and Public History at the University of Amsterdam.
Her interests include the medical and health humanities, bioart and design, disability studies, museums and monuments, and digital public history. She has developed exhibitions on a wide range of topics, including global health and human rights, disability in the American Civil War, and medicinal and recreational drug use, with project budgets ranging from $14,500 to $3 million. Her traveling exhibitions have visited more than 300 venues across Argentina, Canada, Germany, Guam, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Her research focuses on health communication in historical perspective, including the monograph Broadcasting Birth Control: Family Planning and Mass Media (Critical Issues in Health and Medicine Series, Rutgers University Press, August 2013) on the history of the birth control movement’s use of mass media in America and around the world. Her current book project Human Curiosities: Expanding the Social Relevance of Medical Museums, was funded by a VENI grant of €315,000 from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, and she is also developing a new research project titled "Persuasion and Public Health: Learning from the History of Health Communication."
She was co-editor, with Ellen S. More and Elizabeth Fee, of Women Physicians and the Culture of Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), winner of the Archivists and Librarians in the Health Sciences Publication Award for Best Print Publication in 2012, and has previously served as a Managing Editor of the UK journal Museum & Society and as International Consulting Editor for the US journal The Public Historian.
She is a member of the World Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural and Cultural Insights, leads the MA History: Medical and Health Humanities at the VU, and directs the PULSE Network for Health Humanities.
Visit www.manonparry.com for details of public history and research projects, updated CV, and news on recent activities.
