School of Social and Political Science

Dr John Nott

Research Fellow

Photograph of John
john.nott@ed.ac.uk
https://edinburgh.academia.edu/JohnNott/
2.27
Chisholm House
High School Yards
Edinburgh
UK
EH1 1LZ

Research interests

Global health policy Health & Well-being Historical approaches to science, technology and medicine Race and decolonial thought Social studies of biology and medicine Technology and material culture

My research interests sit primarily across the history of medicine and economic history, with a particular focus on colonial and postcolonial contexts. I also have complementary interests in medical anthropology and STS.  

To this end, I am currently a Research Fellow on Lukas's Engelmann's ERC-funded project The Epidemiological Revolution. A History of Epidemiological Reasoning in the Twentieth Century. Here, amongst other things, I am working on a monograph detailing the economic and medical history of surveillance in Anglophone Africa. 

I am also PI of a collaborative British Academy-funded protect, Population health in practice: towards a comparative historical ethnography of the Demographic Health Survey, which explores the history and contemporary production of epidemiological and demographic data in Ghana, Tanzania and Malawi. 

Background

I was trained at the University of Leeds, where my PhD focussed the history of nutrition and nutritional medicine in Ghana since the end of the nineteenth century. A monograph derived from this project, Between Feast and Famine: Food, Health, and the History of Ghana’s Long Twentieth Century, is forthcoming with UCL Press in early 2025. Some of my other work on the history of nutrition can be found here.

Immediately prior to coming to Edinburgh, I was a fellow at the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) at the University of Ghana. Before this I was based at Maastricht University as a Research Fellow on Anna Harris' ERC-funded project, Making Clinical Sense, a historical-ethnographic study of the technologies used medical education. Our edited collection, Making Sense of Medicine: Material Culture and the Reproduction of Medical Knowledge, recently won the Amsterdamska Award by the European Association for the Study of Science & Technology (EASST). More of our work on technology and the epistemology of medicine can also be found here.

Works within

Publications by user content

Publication Research Explorer link
Nott J. Material history, historied materials and the question of epistemic freedom in Ghana’s medical schools. Social History of Medicine. 2024 Feb 1;37(1):116-140. Epub 2023 Sept 6. doi: 10.1093/shm/hkad039
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Nott J. Architecture for anatomy: History, affect, and the material reproduction of the body in two medical school buildings. Body and Society. 2023 Jun;29(2):99-129. Epub 2023 Apr 10. doi: 10.1177/1357034X231161312
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Nott J, Harris A. Teaching the normal and the pathological: Educational technologies and the material reproduction of medicine. Science as Culture. 2023;32(2):214-239. Epub 2023 Feb 10. doi: 10.1080/09505431.2023.2171859
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Nott J, (ed.), Harris A, (ed.). Making Sense of Medicine: Material Culture and the Reproduction of Medical Knowledge. Intellect, 2022. 464 p. (Global Health Humanities).
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John- Nott's Research Explorer profile