Overview

I am a PhD candidate in History; my project looks at the development of the public health discourse since the 1950s, and at the interactions between the Global Health policy regime and local health governance. I am appraching my research questions from the point of view of Cultural History, however my investigation is informed by Medical Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies.

I have also been teaching as a Postgraduate Teaching Associate since September 2022.

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Research

My PhD reasearch project

I am exploring Global Health discourse and local health governance, more specifically, the current web of relations between the global health framework and how its visions manifest locally. In order to do so, I am taking one particular area of policy, namely childhood immunisation policies, and follow its development starting from the post WWII period and zooming in on the more recent decades. My case study focusses on the Veneto region in Northern Italy. 

The project relies on archival research and on Oral History interviews. By combining and triangulating these different sources I aim to unpack the multiple, interacting layers and power-dynamics involved in the global-local health policy interaction, i.e.  global public discourse, competing professional and personal narratives, and geopolitical forces.

Because of the complexity of the subject matter, this is an interdisciplinary research project, which is solidly grounded in History and is informed by analytical perspectives from Medical Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies. My supervisory team is interdisciplinary and affiliated with the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health.  

My Wider Research Interests

My recent studies have all been aimed at unpacking epistemological issues underpinning different methodologies, as applied in the various disciplinary areas, in order to be able to identify the best approach for my research questions. These focus on the human-social-environmental interaction in general, how it plays out, and how it changes according to different contexts, across times, spaces and cultural manifestations. 

Oral History, Social History, Ethnographic Biography, Cultural Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies are disciplines from which I am currently drawing; however, I am also interested in issues related to​International Studies, Human Rights and the global-local interface generally.

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Teaching

Modules taught

• HIH1137 - Becoming a Historian: Core

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Biography

I come from a distinctly multi-disciplinary background; I studied at the University of Liverpool a combined honours degree programme in Social and Environmental Studies which allowed me to explore social issues across departments such as Civic Design, Human Geography, Politics and Law.

I then decided to focus on the international dimension and completed a Master's degree in International Studies at the University of Leeds, where I became particularly interested in international agreements. 

More recently, I went back to university in Italy, at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, to gain further methodological skills and epistemological insights form within the Humanities: I took exams within the faculties of Cultural Anthropology, Philosophy and History. Over this period, I developed the idea for my PhD proposal.

P.S. Informally, I also go by Maresa Marangoni.

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