'Worlds of nursing: connections and circulations among and about nurses from 1850 to 1950'
My own interest for the history of nursing and nurses has its origins in a slightly different perspective than the ones which have motivated works by most of nursing historians. Their own tack on nursing as a profession, a discipline and a know how seem to have derived mostly from their involvement into contemporary nursing issues, as they tried to understand their professional or educational field. Mine comes from an interest for nursing as one among the several fields of the 'social domain' that have been developed and shaped during the modern age through circulations and connections across national, linguistic and civilizational boundaries. From the competing and coordinated training experiments led in Kaiserwerth, London and Lausanne beginning in the middle of the 19th century, to the vast programs engineered by regional and global intergovernmental organizations in the middle of the 20th century, my hypothesis is that nursing as a profession, a discipline and a know how was disputed and discussed transnationally by its protagonists, and that this shaped very deeply its regional, national or local avatars. Professional, gender, educational and public policy issues have been rattled from Latin Asia to Europe and the Americas by the connections and circulations generated by professional nursing groups (national organisations or societies such as the International Council of Nurses), hospital reformers, international governmental and non governmental organisations (League of Red Cross Societies, Rockefeller Foundation) that have contributed to establish, define, orient and maintain the circulatory configurations of the worlds of nursing. My presentation would briefly sketch the hypothesis and first results of this research, and linger on the methodological issues their explorations has made necessary.