We are happy to share with hmadness readers, the call for papers, of the second event of Who cares? scholars.

Who Cares? De la psychiatrie dans l’aire anglophone is a group of scholars from the Université Paris Nanterre and Université Sorbonne Nouvelle formed in 2023 and dedicated to the history of psychiatry in the English-speaking world. A central ambition of the Who Cares project has been the organization of a series of international conferences on the history of psychiatry in the English-speaking world. The first event took place on 6-8 February 2025 at Université Paris Nanterre and gathered scholars around the topic “People and Places”. This Call for Papers invites contributions that critically engage with the theme of our second event: “Theories and Policies”

Argument

This Call for Papers invites contributions that critically engage with the theme of our second event: “Theories and Policies” (19-21 March 2026, Université Paris Nanterre).  

The history of psychiatry raises the question of  its disciplinary breadth, which Jan Goldstein once attributed to the very nature of psychiatry, an old discipline somehow “lack[ing] the stability that age would seem to confer”. While it was originally  written by psychiatrists and healthcare professionals (most famously, Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter), it also increasingly caught the attention of scholars in social, cultural and intellectual history, as well as historians of science and medicine from the 1970s-80s onwards.

The term “psychiatry” is to be taken in the broadest sense of the word, as defined by historian Roy Porter – a discipline which is “as old as the hills if we treat it as a portmanteau term for all attempts to minister to minds diseased”. This approach is perfectly in line with the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary, presenting psychiatry as the “branch of medicine concerned with the causes, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mental illness”. Though the term “psychiatre” was used in French as early as 1802, the word “psychiatrist” only appeared much later in the English language, in 1875, while “psychiatry” seems to have been in use since 1846. This does not mean however that the phrase “history of psychiatry” should only apply from the 19th century onwards, and it is entirely justified when dealing with any historical research on the treatment of the mentally ill.  The case of Bedlam in London, that was founded in 1247 as a monastery, then transformed into a hospital and is still considered today as the oldest “psychiatric” hospital in the world, provides a perfect example of the existence of psychiatric practices even before the coining of the term.

Far from being a mere play on words, the polysemy in our project title “Who cares?” raises the question of the attention paid to the patient in the therapeutic relationship, or their potential neglect. Evoking the feeling of incomprehension, contempt or indifference that the patient may feel during therapy, it highlights the gap between the medical professional’s perspective, often focused on pathology, and the patient’s subjective experience. On the other hand, questioning the subject of care, it underlines the possible failure of caregivers to treat certain aspects of the illness, deemed secondary or negligible. It also questions the attention granted to the mentally ill and the respect (or lack thereof) shown towards them by the public at large, an attitude that is intricately linked to the perceptions and mindsets of a given society at a certain period of time, making it a genuine social and historical issue. What is more, the question “Who cares?” is intended as a reflection on the place, the role and the recognition of the history of psychiatry in the wider field of the social and political history of the English-speaking world.

The 2026 Who Cares? conference theme “Theories & Policies” seeks to further this scholarly investigation by examining the intersections and/or tensions between theories on psychiatry, and the policy design and/or implementation emanating from them. 

Theories can be defined as coherent sets of ideas or general principles used to formulate, explain, predict or even justify medical or political outcomes. A theory can also be seen as a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based – here, psychiatric or mental health care. On the other hand, the term Policies encompasses policy design, the selection of preferred policy tools and the implementation of actions and changes on the ground, be they political, social or medical, along with their consequences. Policies primarily imply the analysis of public policies, which are here understood in Paul Cairney’s comprehensive terms, as “the sum total of government action, from signals of intent to the final outcomes.” 

Consideration of political inaction is equally relevant to analyses of public policy, which can be more comprehensively defined in the words of Thomas Dye as “whatever governments choose to do or not to do.”  Indeed, beyond the practical difficulties underlying the perceived success or failure of policies, this conference also invites reflection on the actors’ political ambitions and their effects on the policy agenda. Issues of popularity, the necessity to mitigate one’s policies to secure support, and more broadly, the folding of theories into institutional politics and in the power-play of governance, might also affect the nature and scope of the policies in question. This, to Paul Cairney, determines “the difference between good politics and bad policies (and vice versa)”.

More broadly, policies can also be approached as the spectrum of policy options available, in and outside of governmental channels. Indeed, while the history of psychiatry has traditionally been addressed via considerations of public policy, it has also explored a broader definition of policies which has enabled historical analysis beyond the official/dominant policy and the official/dominant discourse. Based on H. K. Colebatch’s definition, policies can thus be defined as activities that bring different bodies together into stable and predictable patterns of action. This definition enables historical explorations of other private actors, such as private institutions, charities etc. (Roy Porter, William Parry Jones, Leonard Smith). It has also enabled recent historiography to decenter political action and consider the role of individuals, or of movements, such as the antipsychiatry movement, mental patients’ rights groups etc. (Oisin Wall, Judi Chamberlin, Barbara Everett, Linda Morrison).

Beyond the analysis of theories and policies on psychiatric and mental health care in and of themselves, this conference also seeks to explore the intersections between the two, as they raise questions about the congruence between contemporary theories on psychiatry and political discourses, actions, and outcome throughout history. These include for instance institutional responses to mental illness. The history of mental institutions, and the material conditions leading to the rise of public lunatic asylums, has thus been studied by generations of historians from Gerald Grob to Kathleen Jones, Andrew Scull, Roger Smith, Jonathan Andrews to Peter Bartlett. Similarly, studies have focused on the transitions from asylums to mental hospitals and accompanying reforms on the treatment and rights of the patients (Gerald Grob, Kathleen Jones, Peter Barham, Barbara Taylor, Ann Parsons, Pauline Prior). 

Changes in conceptualisation and categorisation over time are also a potent avenue to explore the interconnection between theories and policies in the field of psychiatry: far from being  purely medical or psychological creations, new concepts reshape the policy field through theoretical and practical reappraisals. To give but one example, the concept of “criminal insanity” – which implies an alteration or even abolition of discernment at the time of the offense – cannot be reduced to a purely medical or psychological concept, as it has theoretical and  practical  implications in terms of criminal responsibility:  the offender may be found  ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’,  and then ‘guilty but insane’ after the Trial of Lunatics Act of 1883, which has a profound impact on the way they are treated in the existing legal and penal system (Roger Smith). The ethical stakes of such a verdict are high, particularly in the context of 19th– century  Britain when capital punishment was still in use and throughout the 20th century in the US.

Analyses of the interrelation between theories and public policies also address potential gaps between intention and implementation. The gradual shift from cure to custody in the long nineteenth century demonstrated by Andrew Scull has led many researchers to examine the resulting challenges to contemporary asylum policies, and the adjustment, incorporation and/or resistance to mounting theories on eugenics at the turn of the century (Mark Jackson, Alison Bashford & Philipa Levine, Erica Dyck, Paul Lombardo). It has also revealed how the theoretically positive and optimistic therapeutic approach adopted by alienists in the mid-Victorian era was gradually undermined by concrete results in terms of recovery, that were deemed disappointing enough to justify a change in policy, which eventually led to drastic cuts in public investment and fuelled a wave of medical pessimism. Studies on mental institutions have been anchored in institutional, social and political history : historians such as Peter Bartlett, Kathleen Jones and Roger Smith viewed asylums as existing in a complex network of care providers for the insane. Peter Barlett, for instance, provided cogent evidence that county asylums were firmly rooted within the administrative framework of the 1834 Poor Law provision. More recently, Rob Ellis has demonstrated the importance of situating asylum policies within the context of local government reforms.

Recent work has demonstrated the erosion and/or the ebb and flow of certain theoretical policy paradigms in connection with their implementation over the course of the 20th century. For instance, historical analyses of policies of deinstitutionalization have been central to studies of recent mental health policies across the English-speaking world. Anne Parsons has analysed how the politics of mass incarceration shaped the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric hospitals and mental health policy making in the United States in the late 20th century. Matthew Smith has recently addressed the fortunes of social psychiatry in the postwar United States, notably its partial implementation and inherent limits in tackling interrelated socio-economic factors: poverty, inequality, social isolation. For her part, Elodie Edwards-Grossi has analyzed the evolving uses of racial theories in psychiatry throughout the 20th century, in light of various socio-political upheavals (the Great Migration, World War II, desegregation, the Civil Rights Movement) as well as the impact of the advent of biological psychiatry over both theories and policies.

Finally, the intersection between theories and policies also invites reflections on their underlying assumptions about race, gender and class.  If indeed, politics is about “who gets what, when, how”, historical explorations of the impact of such policies on specific groups are encouraged. Since the 1990s, studies on colonial psychiatry have put the emphasis on the ways in which colonial stereotypes of the colonized other’s inferiority perpetuated the theoretical and practical underpinnings of colonial psychiatry, regardless of the empires and territories involved (Waltraud Ernst, Sloan Mahone, Megan Vaughan, Dinesh Bhugra, Roland Littlewood). In that respect colonial mental institutions contributed to reproducing the inequalities present in colonial societies and social historians have demonstrated how racial theories, such as scientific racism, were deeply embedded in psychiatric policies. Recent studies have also uncovered the persistence of racial biases and institutional racism in postcolonial contexts (Leonard Smith, Jock McCulloch, Dennis Doyle, Mab Segrest).

This international conference, to be held at Université Paris Nanterre on 19-21 March 2026, will thus welcome  all historical approaches to psychiatry and more generally  to the treatment of mental illness which reflect on the topic “Theories and Policies”  from the Middle Ages to the end of the 20th century in English-speaking countries.

Topics may include:

• Framing, implementation and outcome of policies of institutionalization / deinstitutionalization/ transinstitutionalization
• Lunacy reform, moral management and no restraint
• Theoretical debates and their impact in shaping policy (e. g. eugenics, theories of degeneracy etc.)
• Preventive vs curative policies
• Alternative and pilot policies/programmes in psychiatric and mental health care
• Mixed economy of psychiatric care / role of the private sector / charities 
• Political definitions of community, e. g. therapeutic community movement (1960s), care in the community policies (1980s) etc.
• Policy networks / group-government relations / interactions between different sets of actors in shaping mental health policies (e. g. role of psychiatrists, social scientists, policy makers and politicians)
• Political role of patient rights groups (e. g. mad-pride movement; service users’ movement; or more recently psychiatric survivors’ movement) 
• Models / theories and their application or non application in public / private psychiatry
• Mental illness and crime : biological theories of crime,  insanity defence in criminal law, from  “criminal lunatic asylums” to high-security psychiatric hospitals etc.
• Practice and theoretical underpinnings of colonial psychiatry
• Influence of ideas on gender / race / sexuality on mental health policies 

Selected bibliography.

Submission guidelines

We invite proposals on “Theories and Policies” to be submitted

by September 1st, 2025.

Paper proposals (20-minute presentation format), written in English (approximately 250 words) and accompanied by a short biographical note in a single Word document, should be sent to whocaresconference@gmail.com

Please note this Call for Papers is for in-person presentations only.

The presentations will be exclusively in English.

Conference organisers

Cécile Birks, Claire Deligny, Laurence Dubois (Observatoire de l’aire britannique, Université Paris Nanterre), Elisabeth Fauquert (Politiques américaines/ORUS, Université Paris Nanterre) and Laetitia Sansonetti (Prismes, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle).

Scientific committee 

• Cécile Birks, Claire Deligny, Laurence Dubois and  Elisabeth Fauquert (Université Paris Nanterre)
• Elodie Edwards-Grossi (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL & Institut Universitaire de France)
• Hervé Guillemain (Le Mans Université)
• Anatole Le Bras (Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines)
• Julie Le Gac (Université Paris Nanterre & Institut Universitaire de France)
• Fabienne Moine (Université Paris-Est Créteil)
• Michel Prum (Université Paris Cité)
• Laetitia Sansonetti (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle).