Laurence Monnais
Laurence Monnais is a professor of history and Director of the Center for Asian Studies (CETASE) at Université de Montréal, Canada. She is also the scientific director of the academic press Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal (PUM). Her international reputation rests on several innovative books and many articles dealing with the history of medicine in Southeast Asia, colonial medicine, global histories of health and the history of pharmaceuticals including vaccines. She is the author of Médecine et colonisation. L’aventure indochinoise, 1860-1939 (CNRS Editions, 1999), Médicaments coloniaux. L’expérience vietnamienne, 1905-1940 (Les Indes Savantes, 2014), Médecine(s) et santé. Une petite histoire globale (PUM, 2016) and more recently Vaccinations. Le mythe du refus (PUM, 2019), The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals. Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and co-editor of Southern Medicine for Southern People. Vietnamese Medicine in the Making (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), Global Movements Local Concerns. Medicine and Health in Southeast Asia (NUS Press, 2012), and Doctors Beyond Borders. The Transnational Migration of Physicians in the Twentieth Century (University of Toronto Press, 2016).
She is currently working on the history immunization policies and vaccine hesitancy in Canada since the 1960s with fellow historian Heather MacDougall (University of Waterloo) and has a new project supported by SSHRC dealing with a global history of measles. A former Canada Research Chair (2007-2017) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, she is also co-founder (2006) and president of HOMSEA (History of Medicine in Southeast Asia), a pioneer association in the development of the history of health and medical humanities in Southeast Asia that advocates for an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge and practice of health care in the region.