Dora Vargha
Predoctoral Research Fellow
Rutgers University
Residence: January 1–June 30 and September 1–June 30, 2013, partly funded by the Mellon Foundation
Anchored in Cold War medical crises, my historical research uses Eastern Europe as a lens to develop broader geographical and temporal analyses of population management and healthcare. Through histories of childhood and maternity, I show how the planning and management of future generations' health in Eastern Europe point to global questions of who bears responsibility for health, what the limits are of that responsibility and what part should states, international agencies and individuals play in protecting health and treating disease.
I earned my BA at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest in
History in 2004. My thesis, The Medicalization of Sin was published as
an article in the cultural history journal, Budapest Quarterly in 2005.
Following my undergraduate studies, I worked for an
international public relations company for two years, organizing selective waste
awareness campaigns and corporate responsibility programs. During my graduate studies at Rutgers University, I worked as graduate assistant at the Center for Race and Ethnicity
under the direction of Keith Wailoo, and was an Excellence Fellow at the
Institute for Health, Health Policy and Aging Research. I am a member
of the program committee of the Joint Atlantic Seminar in the History
of Medicine and the recipient of the Mellon Dissertation Writing Fellowship and the Karen Johnson Freeze Fellowship,
awarded by SHOT and the Foundation for the History of Technology. I completed my PhD in History at Rutgers University in January, 2013.
Vargha, Dora. "Polio Vaccination in Cold War Hungary. " The History of Vaccines Blog – A Project of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (2011)
Vargha, Dora. "The Medicalization of Sin. The body of the prostitute in 19th century Hungarian medical discourse [in Hungarian language]. " Budapesti Negyed (47-48 2005)
June 18, 2013
Paper to be presented at the colloquium of the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen – "Vaccination and Vacillation. The Cold War Politics of Polio Prevention in Hungary"
November 5, 2012
Pre-Doctoral Research Seminar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin – "The power of polio"
October 16, 2012
Colloquium of the Institute and Museum of the History of Medicine, University of Zurich – "Where is the poster child? Communist ideology and disability in Hungary in times of polio"
June 27, 2012
ISCHE 34-SHCY-DHA “Internationalization in Education (18th-20th centuries)” conference, Geneva, Switzerland – "Body and mind institutionalized: raising children with polio in Hungary"
April 20, 2012
10th Annual LSE-GWU-UCSB Cold War Graduate Conference, London, UK – "One from the East, One from the West": Vaccine Evaluation and Cold War Politics in Hungary in the 1950s
more
July-August, 2012
Rutgers University Summer Session – From Plague to Swine Flu: Epidemics in Historical Context
