Dr. Edward H. Bensley Osler Library Research Travel Grant
Image by Osler Library Photo Collection.
The Dr. Edward H. Bensley Osler Library Research Travel Grant is available to historians, physicians, graduate and post-doctoral students, and to those interested in the arts and humanities of medical history whose project requires them to travel to Montreal to consult material in the Osler Library. Each year up to $5,000 in reimbursement for travel and travel-related expenses will be made to one or more individuals who require a minimum of 2 weeks to carry out their research during the fiscal year, 1 May 2026 - 30 April 2026.
The Osler Library Research Travel Grant is endowed through the generosity of graduates of the Class of Medicine of 1936, and a $100,000 gift from the Pope-Jackson Fund.听 The grant recognises Dr. E.H. Bensley鈥檚 place in the history of the library.听 A former dean of the Faculty of Medicine (now the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences), Dr. Bensley's later life was devoted to the history of medicine.听 He was affiliated with the Department of the History of Medicine (fore-runner of the present Department of Social Studies of Medicine) and taught the history of medicine to second year medical students.听 He also edited the Osler Library Newsletter and wrote extensively.听 His last book, 平特五不中 Medical Luminaries, was the first title to appear in the Osler Library Studies in the History of Medicine series.听 He was named Honorary Osler Librarian in 1979.
The applications are considered by a committee which gives preference to specific and clearly described projects. Recipients will be requested to submit a report of their work suitable for publication in the Osler Library Newsletter and may be invited to give a brief presentation at the University.
The deadline for a new round of applications is January 15, 2025.听
Requests for further information should be addressed to:
Dr. Alessandra Scimone听is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at Alma Mater Studiorum 鈥� University of Bologna, Italy. Her main research fields are the history of classical and medieval medicine and the medieval Latin reception of Greek medical texts, paying attention to the edition and the study of their manuscript tradition. Within the framework of her interests, the research at the Osler Library will focus on Francesco da Piedimonte and the ancient medicine reception in medieval Italian universities, aiming at making a contribution to the study of the evolution of academic doctrine and medical practice in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy.
Dr. Stephan Strunz is a research associate at the Institute for the History of Medicine at Technische Universit盲t Dresden. He is interested in the intersections of bureaucratic, literary and medical forms of knowledge. His current project is a transnational history of housing hygiene surveys in various metropolises at the turn of the twentieth century. At the Osler library, he will look at materials documenting the implementation of French housing survey systems in the city of Montr茅al.
听
Previous winners:
2023
Dr Sara Fernandes Crouch is an early career researcher and teaching associate at the University of Melbourne. She works at the intersection of English and Medical History, and is currently finishing a monograph on skin and the eighteenth-century novel. Her research at the Osler will concentrate on late eighteenth-century medical sources produced in England and Jamaica. She will trace the ways in which the vogue for taxonomy in the natural sciences influenced the way disease was written about by physicians and proto-dermatologists Robert Willan, Thomas Bateman, and Samuel Plumbe, and physician and abolitionist Richard Robert Madden. These materials will complete a chapter on the theme of 鈥榠nheritance,鈥� in terms of both skin-to-skin contact and the communicability of physical illnesses, and English anxiety about the communicability of moral and racial degeneration (which was racialized via writings on complexion) in the West Indies.
Bart Lutters is a PhD Candidate in the History of Medicine at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He is particularly interested in the history of neurosurgery, the cultural history of the brain, and bridging the divergent medical historiographic cultures of physicians and professional historians. At the Osler Library, Bart will investigate the way brain experts at the Montreal Neurological Institute interacted with the public through visual media during the second half of the Twentieth Century. His research will be the start of a larger research project on the way the professional and public discourses of the brain and mind were co-produced in Montr茅al during the postwar period.
2022
Dr. Andreas J眉ttemann is a assistant professor in the History of Medicine and Psychology Group at the Institute of Anatomy at the Medical School Brandenburg in Germany. His main field of research is history of hospitals. Currently, together with partners in Scandinavia, he is researching the history of the 鈥濻ea hospices鈥� on the coasts of Europe, convalescent homes for children with scrofula and rickets, established on the coasts all over Europe as well as on the East Coast of North America at the end of the 19th century. In the Osler Library, he wants to investigate in particular the extent to which Canada adapted the idea and which institutions were founded.
2020
Dr. Elma Brenner (Wellcome Collection, London, UK) studies the medical and religious culture of late medieval France and England. Her research at the Osler Library will focus on a richly illuminated French manuscript acquired by the Osler in 2019, containing medical recipes and health regimens likely compiled c.1515 by the French aristocrat Fran莽ois II de Rohan, archbishop of Lyon. She will investigate the contents, textual organisation and material features of the manuscript, with particular attention to the attribution of recipes to named physicians and surgeons; the medicinal substances described; and the decorative features of the manuscript. She will seek to place this remarkable artefact in the broader context of other materials held at the Osler and elsewhere. This research will have an important place in her current book project on trust and health in the later Middle Ages.
听
Megan Piorko is a Dissertation Fellow at the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine and a PhD Candidate at Georgia State University. Megan's work is broadly situated at the nexus of the history of the book and the history of science. Her article, 鈥淪eventeenth-Century Chymical Collections: A Study of Unique Copies of Fasciculus Chemicus鈥� addresses the individuality of hand-press texts and their subsequent impact on early modern alchemy. During her time at the Osler Library she will complete research to expand her doctoral thesis, Chymical Collections: Seventeenth-Century Textual Transmutations in the work of Arthur Dee, into a book project that addresses the use and reuse of seventeenth-century alchemical texts in early modern medicine.
2019
Dr. Ayman Yasin Atat is a fellow in the department of the history of science and pharmacy at TU Braunschweig, Germany.听His main research fields are Arabic traditional materia medica and the听history of Arabic pharmacy and medicine, and also studying and editing Arabic medical manuscripts. Currently he is working on editing and translating the 鈥淩aw岣峚t al-士i峁璻鈥� manuscript written by al-Shirw膩n墨 (was alive circa 1456 CE). The author quoted extensively from the famous Andalusian botanist Ibn al-Bay峁乺 (d. 1248 CE), who wrote an important book entitled 鈥渁l-Mughn墨 f墨 al-峁琲bb鈥�.听The听copy of this work that is held at Osler library seems to be the most complete听one. I will be studying this copy and its contents in order to have a full review of this important text. It will lead to add a new perspective of Ibn al-Bay峁乺鈥檚 writings and their effects on the development of materia medica culture.
Dr. Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi is an architectural historian with a particular interest on emotions in the context of colonial architecture. One of her articles is forthcoming in the Journal of Architecture and Culture in July 2019. Currently, she is working on her monograph entitled A 鈥淐hain鈥� of Affective Architecture: the case of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) hospitals in a 鈥淢uslim World鈥�. Chapter 4 of her monograph analyses the architecture of women hospitals and discusses the involvement of female medical missionaries in the construction process of the hospitals. To write this chapter, she will consult 鈥淢innie Gomery Fonds鈥� collection at the Osler Library.
听
2018
Dr. Margaret Carlyle's research focuses on the production of scientific, medical, and technological knowledge in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France and its colonies. She is particularly interested in the enterprising efforts of women and other "invisible assistants" in forging scientific careers, both outside of and within institutional settings. Margaret is currently completing two projects. The first is a cultural history of Enlightenment anatomy stemming from her doctoral thesis completed at 平特五不中 (2013). The second is a history of obstetrical technology in early modern Europe. Margaret has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge (2013鈥�15) and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota (2015鈥�17).
Dr. Jessica M. Dandona is Associate Professor of Art History at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her project, 鈥淭he Transparent Woman: Medical Visualities in Fin-de-Si猫cle Europe, Canada, and the United States, 1890鈥�1914,鈥� comprises a close look at techniques of medical visualization at the end of the 19th century. Working with the Paris Medical Theses collection, Dandona will investigate how physicians in four early centres of medical training鈥擯aris, Edinburgh, Montreal, and Philadelphia鈥攃onceptualized the bodies of women and infants in visual terms.
Dr. Caroline Petit (University of Warwick, Department of Classics & Ancient History and Centre for the Study of the Renaissance) is a specialist of early medical texts, particularly Galen and the Galenic corpus. At the moment, she is interested in the early reception of Galen in the Renaissance (before the Aldine edition of 1525). Her stay at the Osler library will allow her to explore in more depth the works of Symphorien Champier and his circle, aiming at clarifying Champier鈥檚 ambivalent position on issues ranging from pharmacology to religious matters. Her project, Symphorien Champier and the early reception of Galen in Renaissance France, will be a stepping stone towards a new publication on Galen and his readers.
听
2017
Dr. Shilpa Bhat Daithota is Assistant Professor English at Ahmedabad University, Gujarat, India. Her project, "Tropical Medicines, Indian Pathologies, and the British Raj in Sir Willliam Osler鈥檚 Letters," centers around an examination Osler's writings concerning his visit to India and tropical medicine, with an interest in the connection between representation and discussion of diseases and colonialism.
Prof. Eliza Glaze is the Lawrence B. and Jane P. Clark Chair in History at Coastal Carolina University. At Osler, she will be consulting early printed texts by medieval and early modern authors on topics such as fevers, pharmacy, dietetics, and therapeutic bathing to complete a scholarly introduction and annotations to her critical edition of Gariopontus of Salerno鈥檚听Passionarius, to be published by SISMEL Edizione del Galluzzo as part of the 'Edizione Nazionale La Scuola Medica Salernitana' series.
Cam Terwilliger teaches creative writing at Drew University and his fiction has appeared in literary journals since 2004. He will conduct research on eighteenth-century medical sources for his project, Yet Wilderness Grew in my Heart, a novel set during the Seven Years War (1756-1763) that centers around a European physician living among the Mohawk people studying Native medicines.
听
2016
Kathleen Pierce is a PhD candidate in Art History at Rutgers University. Her dissertation analyzes the imbrication of disease, the family, and empire in the visual culture of France and its colonies at the turn of the twentieth century. This grant will allow her to complete a chapter, wherein she plans to deconstruct the iconography of prophylactic poster campaigns against syphilis.
听
Dr. Heather Stanley is a postdoctoral fellow in History at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her current project is a social and cultural history of postpartum depression in twentieth-century Canada, with an end goal of publication as a scholarly monograph and an eventual manuscript.
听
2015
Dr. Elma Brenner is a Specialist in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine at the Wellcome Library in London. Her project, Early Printing on the French Disease at the Osler Library, will study a number of early printed works on the French Disease in order to chart contemporary responses to this phenomenon, with the end goal to publish her findings in an article.
Emily Lockhart completed her BFA (Honours with Distinction) in Communication and Design, Photography at Ryerson University. The travel grant will be used to support phase two of a historical photographic project, which will result in a series of images exploring the spaces of medical instruction and study at 平特五不中 today and in the wake of the First World War. It will have two publication aims: a gallery exhibition timed to coincide with the reconstruction of the Medical Museum in 2015, and a companion catalogue volume supplemented by archival research.
Dr. Sasha Mullally is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick. The travel grant will be used to support research for a book-length manuscript on the history of physician immigration to Canada, c.1955-1980.
2014
Dr. Mary E. Fissell is a Professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. The travel grant will allow her to conduct research for her book project on the history of Aristotle鈥檚 Masterpiece, a popular work on what we would now call reproduction.
Osler Library Travel Grant Application Form and email听it听with their CV to the Osler Library, see email address below.
