The Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University will host the 18th annual Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine (JAS-Med) between September 25th and 26th, 2026, in Baltimore, MD. Originally founded in 2002 with a mission of fostering a collegial intellectual community amongst graduate students and providing an engaging forum for graduate research, JAS-Med is proudly student-led and student-organized. We welcome interest and participation from graduate students pursuing research in the history of medicine and related fields, including students from anthropology, sociology, public health, bioethics, law, gender and sexuality studies, political science, as well as ethnicity, race, and migration studies.
We invite all interested graduate students — Master’s, PhD, and MD/PhD — to an submit abstract by 11:59 PM EST on June 26th, 2026. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words and should clearly state the purpose, thesis, and principal findings of the paper to be presented. JAS-Med 2026 will include both panel discussions and poster presentations. Details regarding registration will be communicated over the summer.
We encourage student presentations on any topic, including those utilizing interdisciplinary approaches. Past presenters have worked with geographic information systems, statistics, demography, literary criticism, ethnography, and visual analysis. By welcoming these varied forms of scholarship, we hope to inspire a sustained and rigorous discussion on what it means to produce histories of medicine.
We urge students whose papers are accepted to seek financial support from their home institutions to participate in the seminar. We hope that a limited amount of travel support will be made available to students whose home departments are not able to subsidize their travel; however, we are uncertain as to the extent and availability of such funding at this time. Information about availability of funding and how to apply will be sent to those whose proposals are accepted for the program.
We look forward to welcoming you to Baltimore in September!
— Daisy Sanchez and Casey Fern, JAS-Med 2026 Program Committee Co-Chairs.
Please feel free to reach out to either of the co-chairs with questions or concerns at: jashistofmed@gmail.com.
