Negotiating health and care in humanitarian history

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Friends, family, and local volunteers are usually the first to respond in a crisis, including war, conflict, and disaster. If and when international humanitarian organisations arrive, they enter communities that are already responding to health and care needs. The provision of effective humanitarian aid therefore requires sensitivity to the roles and expectations of local caregivers and their communities. This is becoming more important as international organisations seek to take on health issues that were previously in the hands of local caregivers, such as mental health, yet for which there is a lack of contextual knowledge in the humanitarian sector. Through this research network, we aim to develop a deeper understanding of decision-making and health-seeking in humanitarian settings such as the refugee camp, hospital, and clinic, and to foreground humanitarianism as something actively and continually shaped by diverse actors.The network brings together historians of humanitarianism, medical humanities scholars, and refugee historians who are starting to explore the ways that health and care are negotiated in war, conflict, and disaster. How do expectations, emotions, and power dynamics shape encounters with health workers? Why do some people refuse care or act in unexpected ways? And who has a say in defining what is meant by a health or care need? This research is important because it provides innovative ways of foregrounding individuals and communities who are marginalised in research on humanitarianism, as well as in documentary and archival practices. Yet such inquiries remain under-developed, and humanities researchers' insights have been largely disconnected from the research and advocacy of humanitarian, refugee, and diaspora-led organisations who are grappling with similar questions on community health, as well as from museum and archive professionals' initiatives to capture refugee and aid worker 'voices' and experiences.The network redresses this by creating a space for productive dialogues between academics, humanitarian and medical practitioners, refugee and diaspora-led organisations, and museum and archive professionals. Over 2 years, we will organise 3 research and 2 participatory workshops, enabling practitioners and refugee and diaspora-led organisations to work alongside academics and archivists to better understand decision-making and health-seeking in humanitarian settings. This will allow the network to analyse relationships between differing forms of caregiving, such as how local caregiving has worked alongside and conflicted with international humanitarian aid. It will also allow us to explore different ways of engaging with historical collections, to explore and critique the ways in which humanitarian and refugee documents are displayed and organised, and to reflect on the complex and emotional relationships people have with humanitarian objects, such as first aid equipment. We will use our online presence (website, Twitter) to foster international collaboration, using hybrid workshops to allow Global South scholars, who are under-represented in research on humanitarianism, to participate.Demonstrating the relevance of humanities research to contemporary health humanitarianism is at the heart of the network. Shared objectives and outputs will be developed in collaboration with participants, particularly project partners Shabaka, the Living Refugee Archive, the British Red Cross, and the Humanitarian Archive. Our findings will transform our understanding of how health and care has been negotiated in humanitarian settings in the past and lead conversations on methodologies to foreground agency and negotiation. In this way, the network will inform advocacy on inclusion in health humanitarianism, engagement strategies in the museum and archive sectors, and advance research that is more effectively able to centre the individuals and communities who are marginalised in research and practice.