Joshua Doyle-Raso

Biography

I study the histories of medicine and migration in the Americas, with a primary focus on the historical health and healing strategies of migrant agricultural workers who travel(ed) cyclically between central Mexico and southern Ontario in the late twentieth century. I seek to investigate how such health and healing strategies have influenced and been influenced by the development of the Mexican and Canadian state public health systems, as well as formal migrant labor programs. I completed a Master’s in History and International Development Studies at the University of Guelph in 2018, where my MA thesis examined the tumultuous history of joint Rockefeller Rockefeller and Colombian government-led anti-hookworm campaigns among agricultural workers in Colombia’s coffee zone, 1919-1935.

I am interested in how people have managed illness and injury themselves, particularly in the absence of the health systems with which they grew up, how their experiences of injury, creativity, and resilience produce medical knowledge, and how medical communities can ameliorate, alter, and/or exacerbate inequalities.

Education

M.A., History and IDS, University of Guelph, 2018
B.A., Honors, McGill University, 2015

Field

• History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

M.A. Title

• “Enticement to Sanitation: The Rockefeller Foundation’s Anti-Hookworm Campaign in Colombia, 1919-1935 “

Working Dissertation Title

• “Labor Now, Illness Later”

Selected Awards

• Holtz Center Top-Up Fellowship, 2021
• History Department Graduate Student Summer Scholarship, 2021
• Tinker-Nave Field Research Grant, 2019, 2020, 2021
• Early Excellence in Teaching Award, 2020
• Holtz Center Graduate Student Research Travel Grant, 2020
• Graduate School Student Research Grant Competition Travel Award, 2020
• University of Guelph Graduate Travel, Research, and Creation Fund Award, 2017

Professional Affiliations

• American Association for the History of Medicine

Courses Taught as TA

• History 132: Bees, Trees, Germs, and Genes – A History of Biology
• MedHist 213: Global Environmental Health
• HistSci 222: Engineering Inequality – Technology and Social Change in History
• Hist/LACIS 260: Latin America – An Introduction