Philippa Monk

Research Topic

Inventing a Global Disease: Finding and Treating Yaws in Greater India, 1860-1960

My research explores the connections between colonialism, medicine, and ecology in South Asia. Through examining what I term the “invention” of yaws, I argue that, under British rule (particularly in plantation-concentrated regions, such as Northern Ceylon and Assam), the category of yaws was distinguished from syphilis despite their clinical and pathological similarities; this distinction was consolidated through a spate of globe-spanning eradication campaigns that took place during the 1920s, from US-occupied Haiti to Dutch Indonesia and British India; and that this categorisation has remained in operation ever since, in spite of growing scientific evidence that yaws and syphilis should be treated (literally and metaphorically) as indistinct. I hope that by exploring the construction of yaws as a global disease, I can better understand the transcontinental exchange of colonial medical knowledge, and the ways in which this epistemology laid the foundations for the contemporary landscape of global medicine.

Prior to my DPhil, I completed an MPhil in World History at the University of Cambridge, receiving a Distinction. My Master’s dissertation was titled “Policing, Treating, and Constructing Venereal Disease in the Vietnam War”. It was chosen by the Examination Board to be deposited in the Seeley History Library for future historians to consult, and an adapted version has subsequently been awarded the Jane Willis Kirkaldy Senior Prize at the University of Oxford. I completed my BA in History at the University of Oxford in 2020, receiving a Distinction in both my Finals and Preliminary Examinations, and ranking in the top 3% of my cohort.

My research is generously funded by the Clarendon Fund and Corpus Christi College Clarendon-Watts Studentship, the Beit Fund, and the Colin Matthew Fund at St Hugh's College. 

Grants, Awards & Prizes

Colin Matthew Fund, St Hugh's College, 2024 

Beit Fund Travel Grant, 2024. 

Jane Willis Kirkaldy Senior Prize for an Outstanding Essay in the History of Science, Medicine & Technology - 2023.

Clarendon-Watts Studentship from The Clarendon Fund & Corpus Christi College, 2023-2026.

MPhil Dissertation chosen to be deposited in Seeley History Library, Cambridge, 2023.

Sara Norton Award for Master’s Research, 2022-2023.

Michel Junior Scholarship, 2018-2020.

Conferences, Seminars, and Speaking Engagements 

'Inventing a Global Disease: Finding and Treating Yaws in Greater India, 1860-1960' at Annual HSMT Graduate Conference, University of Oxford (6-7 June 2024). 

'"Don't Worry Mom...We've Got Penicillin": Policing, Treating, and Constructing Venereal Disease in the Vietnam War' at History of Science and Medicine in Southeast Asia Reading Group, University of Cambridge (28 May 2024). 

Keywords

Colonialism, post-colonial studies, world history, global history, history of medicine, history of science, colonial medicine, colonial health, global medicine, global health, venereal disease, civilisational theory, development, plantations, disease ecologies, South Asia, India, Ceylon, Sri Lanka, Assam, Burma, Vietnam, South East Asia, Caribbean.

Supervisor: Maria Misra and Katherine Paugh