The China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a $149,000 grant to Bentley University.  Assistant Professor of History Bridie Andrews will use the funding to organize a conference on the history of medicine in China, scheduled for December 10 to 12 at Endicott House in Dedham, Mass.  

Medical history is a longtime focus for Andrews, whose research centers on the history of medicine in East Asia as a lens through which to examine cultural exchange. “This grant is an endorsement of Bentley as a resource for scholarship in this field and as a research partner for the China Medical Board,” says Andrews.

The conference will bring together leading historians of medicine from Australia, China, Europe, Taiwan, and the U.S. to discuss the history of medicine in China during the past hundred years. Special recognition will be given to presenters whose papers are to be included in a forthcoming edited volume, ­Health and Medicine in Twentieth Century China, co-edited by Andrews.

Professor Andrews studied in China for two years at Xiamen University and the Nanjing College of Pharmacy, where she explored the evolution of Chinese medicine in relation to politics, public perceptions, and Western influences. She holds a PhD from Cambridge University in England and is co-editor of Medicine and Colonial Identity (Routledge, 2003), and Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge (Manchester University Press, 1997).

The China Medical Board (CMB) is an independent U.S. foundation that aims to advance health in China and neighboring Asian countries through strengthening medical, nursing, and public health research and education.