An exciting opportunity has arisen at the University of Manchester from the Wellcome Discovery Award ‘Developing Humanitarian Medicine (DHM): From Alma Ata to Bio-Tech, a History of Norms, Knowledge Production and Care, 1978-2020’ (226515/Z/22/Z) directed by Professor Bertrand Taithe at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI).
This project, on the history of humanitarian medicine as a set of emergency interventions, seeks to generate significant shifts in understanding its scientific and organisational specificity and role in developing clinical norms, debating a ‘rights-based’ approach to health access and leading campaigns for access to drugs while deploying bespoke biotechnological tools.

It investigates questions that have direct relevance to the future of medical humanitarianism:

• How have humanitarian initiatives, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), international and national actors developed humanitarian medicine since the declaration of Alma Ata (1978) on primary healthcare?
• How have they defined humanitarian medicine and its remit?
• How have they established normative processes regulating their action and the reach of humanitarian medicine?
• How have humanitarian medical providers engaged with pharmaceutical and biotech industries?
• And finally, how have states sought to harness and control humanitarian medicine?

This history will inform humanitarian practice and contribute to ongoing debates on how humanitarian medical providers engage with pharmaceutical and biotech industries to disseminate, repurpose, and research drugs and diagnostic tools.
The project has four work packages building up from patient-centred clinical norms and concerns on care to experimental initiatives in humanitarian settings and state-led norm-setting diplomacy through emergency medical teams (EMTs) initiatives. Each workpackage is led by a Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA). Workpackage 1 has so far focused on historicising the evolution of standardised clinical norms and tools in humanitarian medicine, for example in the WHO’s collaborative development of the Emergency Health Kit in the 1980s. Workpackage 2 is considering drug access in humanitarian settings since the 1990s, including procurement decision-making by NGOs and the development of public-private partnerships for market disruption. Workpackage 3 is focused on the contested history of humanitarian ‘beneficiaries’ which will consider how the notion of a humanitarian patient group grew, and how they engaged with medical aid and shaped responses. While the position is associated with Workpackage 4 (see below) it is expected that the post-holder will frame a research question they can make their own and that they will interact with the other Post-Doctoral Research Associates (PDRAs) of the project, and with the Humanitarian Archive at The University of Manchester Library.
The post-holder will be expected to publish under their own name, with other PDRAs/collaborators and with the Principal Investigator (PI) of the project. The post-holder must be willing to engage with the research life of HCRI and develop relationships with the Centre for the History, Science and Technology, the History Department, Global Development Institute, and other departments of UoM as required. This project is undertaken in collaboration with NGO partners (for instance UK-Med, the Centre de Reflexion sur les Actions et les Savoirs Humanitaires at MSF) and it is expected that the applicant will be able to develop their networks to ensure the dissemination of research results, co-production of research and best archiving practices.
Workpackage 4 will primarily examine the history of sovereignty and international humanitarianism. It will focus on medical coordination mechanisms and national registers validated by UN bodies since the UN coordination of refugee camps in the 1980s (e.g. UNBRO) through to the development of Emergency Medical Teams (EMTs) since 2008.
This workpackage will interrogate the response to spontaneous voluntary actors who emerged in periods of intense media engagement with disasters such as the Tsunami of 2006, the Haiti or Nepal earthquakes in 2010 and 2015. This workpackage will charter the development of a regulated network of state-owned and WHO-validated Emergency Medical Teams (Hamilton, 2021). EMTs were set up to represent sovereign states and to train national health system volunteers in emergency medical responses. Since the Ebola epidemic of 2014 these have included pandemic threats, earthquake responses and wars. Such organisations went beyond their technical remit to reinforce the sovereignty of states in deploying aid and challenged ‘amateurs’ as well as internationalist forms of humanitarianism. This workpackage will benefit from the Tony Redmond collection in the Humanitarian Archive, contacts at the WHO, including WHO EMT working groups and the archives of UKMed.
All applicants must have a relevant PhD or equivalent and proven track record of excellent research skills, an ability to pursue an independent research agenda and publications as well as prior NGO knowledge or engagement. HCRI is a multidisciplinary research institute, and we welcome applications from historians, politics, IR, development and area studies scholars, anthropologists and sociologists. We welcome applications that illustrate a commitment to or experience of crossing disciplinary boundaries and working in a research group.
This position will not entail any formal teaching unless requested by applicant for career development purposes and with the agreement of the PI.
As an equal opportunities employer we welcome applicants from all sections of the community regardless of age, sex, gender (or gender identity), ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and transgender status. All appointments are made on merit.
Our University is positive about flexible working you can find out more here
Blended working arrangements may be considered
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