Staying Healthy in a Medieval City

How was public health organised in premodern societies, and does our knowledge about the more distant past relate to experience of pandemic and public health and environmental challenges today? Various historians explore these and other questions following the publication of Community Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries, in which Janna Coomans debunks the myth of medieval cities as apathetic towards filth and disease.

At the entrance you are requested to show your coronavirus pass.

This event can also be attended online.

Based on new archival research and adopting a political land spatial-material approach, Coomans traces in her book how cities developed a broad range of practices to protect themselves and fight disease. Urban societies negotiated challenges to their collective health in the face of social, political and environmental change, transforming ideas on civic duties and the common good. Tasks were divided among different groups, including town governments, neighbours and guilds, and affected a wide range of areas, from water, fire and food, to pigs, prostitutes and plague. By studying these efforts in the round, Coomans offers new comparative insights and bolsters our understanding of the importance of population health and the physical world – infrastructures, flora and fauna – in governing medieval cities.

About the speakers

Guy Geltner is Professor of Medieval History at Monash University. He is a social and cultural historian of mining, public health, punishment and cities, often drawing on documents from Italian archives in the period 1200-1500. His recent book on the topic is Roads to health (UPenn, 2020)

Claire Weeda is Lecturer at the institute for History at Leiden University. She is a cultural historian whose main fields of interest include ethnic stereotyping, the history of the body, Greco-Arabic medicine, and organic politics in Europe, 1100-1500. Her dissertation was published recently as Ethnicity in Medieval Europe, 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion (Boydell & Brewer, 2021). Her current research focuses on the development and spread of medical knowledge in urban centres from 1100-1500.

Janna Coomans is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project ‘Healthscaping Urban Europe’. She obtained her PhD on public health in the medieval Low Countries cum laude, which received the Praemium Erasmianum and Pro Civitate prizes. Her main research interests are the history of cities, health and environments, as well as gender, crime and daily politics. She started her VENI project, titled ‘(In)flammable Cities: How fire risks and prevention transformed the Low Countries (1200-1650)’ at Utrecht University in September 2021.

Manon S. Parry (moderator) is an historian of medicine and exhibition curator, specializing in the uses of the humanities for health and wellbeing. She is currently Professor of Medical History at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and Senior Lecturer in American Studies and Public History at the University of Amsterdam. She has served in formal and informal advisory roles for exhibition projects on health and medicine in museums in both Europe and the US.

Gerelateerde programma’s
04 11 25
Towards a common approach to Europe’s colonial past
European Integration and Co-Imperialism

Until recently, the former imperial nation states of Europe often regarded themselves as historically homogeneous nation states with a colonial past that was separate from their European continental history. Recent research shows that the European integration process was closely intertwined with modern imperialism and decolonization. Tonight, our speakers will discuss these new developments in historiography.  

Datum
Dinsdag 4 nov 2025 20:00 uur
Locatie
SPUI25
03 04 25
From World War II to Sudan, South Sudan, and Gaza
Hunger as a Weapon of War and Genocide

80 years after the ‘Hunger Winter killed an estimated 20,000 people in the western part of the Netherlands, the use of starvation is rising as a tool of war and genocide in global conflicts. Today, around 223 million people living in conflict-affected areas face starvation with devastating long-term consequences. Hunger extends beyond physical sustenance, encompassing moral, emotional, sensorial, and political dimensions. Taking World War II, contemporary Gaza, Sudan, and South Sudan as examples, our expert panel will explore the weaponisation of hunger in its historical, social, economic and political contexts. 

Datum
Donderdag 3 apr 2025 17:00 uur
Locatie
SPUI25
21 03 25
Opera Forward Festival
What Does National Identity Sound Like?

*Unfortunately we will not have a livestream for this program*

How can we comprehend the connection between politics and music? In what ways does ‘the canon’ shape national identity, and how do policies and grassroots movements influence this dynamic? By exploring the sounds of national identity, the Think Tank of the Opera Forward Festival 2025 presents its insights into the musical aspects of nationalism, focusing on the impact of canonization, politics, and identity.

Datum
Vrijdag 21 mrt 2025 17:00 uur
Locatie
SPUI25