Military Welfare History Network – Call for Papers 2025

‘The Military Medicine and Welfare of the First World War: preparations, evolutions and legacies’

Date: Thurs 10 – Fri 11 April 2025

Venue: Muirhead Tower, University of Birmingham

In August 1914, several global empires marched into the world’s first total war of the twentieth century with their nineteenth-century armies. In support of those land, sea and later air forces were medical and nursing units, corps and services, as well as transportation divisions and infrastructures, which, along with medical, convalescent, state welfare and private charity infrastructures and traditions on their home fronts were wholly unprepared for the onslaught they would face.

Taking the First World War era as a case study, this event will look at the welfare, care and medical provisions afforded to service personnel, their families and other dependents – military welfare – before, during and after the conflict. In doing so, it seeks to both build upon and bring together the plethora of research produced by scholars around the globe on topics such as army doctors and nurses; medical transportation, technologies and infrastructures; state benefits; charity; pensions; rehabilitation and care; trauma and memory; migration; and gendered dimensions to military welfare.

Papers are invited that look at:

1. What healthcare and welfare provisions were in place going into the war in all belligerent and non-belligerent states, nations and territories;
2. How or if these developed during and after the war;
3. How or if they continued to evolve after 1918 or if they ceased to exist;
4. How the study of military welfare benefits from comparative and transnational approaches;
5. How the recent centenary of the First World War influenced existing scholarship on military welfare and the potential to explore and implement new concepts to advance the historiography;
6. How of if contemporary military healthcare and welfare provisions and programmes can learn from the developments and experiences of the First World War era?

All of this will be set and viewed within the broader context of the military welfare history ‘perspective’. As a result, the convenors welcome submissions focusing on earlier conflicts, if military welfare during the conflict acted as a precursor to the First World War, and later conflicts, if aspects of their military welfare had a legacy from the Great War.

While some previous conferences relative to the First World War have focused on a constituent part of military welfare history, this symposium will be the first to engage with this diverse field in its entirety. In doing so, it seeks to provide a forum for multidisciplinary knowledge sharing, cross-pollination and constructive scholastic debate.

Submission Deadline

We request submissions via email by Friday 14 February 2025. Individual papers or panels can be submitted. Panels should comprise three papers and submit a panel abstract as well. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words per paper and should be accompanied by a 50-word biography for each presenter.

The conference will be streamed live to registered online attendees and several of the papers will be recorded and hosted on an established podcast series.

This event is free to attend, but please book your place via militarywelfarehistory@gmail.com, if you are not presenting.

Keynotes

Prof Jessica Meyer (University of Leeds) [tbc]

Dr Brian K. Feltman (Georgia Southern University)

Bursaries

A finite number of travel bursaries are available to PGRs and ECRs whose papers are accepted for this event. Applicants who wish to be considered for a bursary may apply to two streams:

1. Members of the Society for the Social History of Medicine (SSHM) may apply directly tothat society for a travel bursary, if their paper is accepted. Please contact the SSHM for more information.
2. Applicants who are not members of the SSHM can express their interest in a ‘ProjectBursary’ when submitting their abstract to the symposium organisers. These will bereimbursed after the event following the submission of claim form and receipts.

Conference Team
Dr Michael Robinson (University of Birmingham)
Dr Paul Huddie (MWHN Co-ordinator)