McGill University Department of Social Studies of Medicine

3647 Peel Street

The Department of Social Studies of Medicine (SSoM), founded in 1966, is an interdisciplinary teaching and research unit in the Faculty of Medicine. Faculty members represent multiple fields, including the history, anthropology, and sociology of medicine, medical science, and public health. Teaching and research focus on the institutional, cultural, and technological determinants of medical knowledge and practices. Subject areas include contemporary biomedicine, hospital architecture, public health, pre-modern scholarly medical traditions, and indigenous non-Western systems. Faculty members participate in the teaching of medical students, and also teach course in their respective disciplinary departments in the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Engineering. SSoM has several endowed professorships, including a James McGill professorship, Tier I Canada Research Chair, Cotton-Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine, and Stevenson Chair in the Philosophy and History of Science including Medicine. Students in the Social Studies of Medicine receive degrees, MAs and PhDs, in their respective disciplines. Postdoctoral fellows are welcome in the department.

SSoM was founded when historian Don Bates joined McGill University as associate professor of the history of medicine and Acting Osler Librarian. In 1975, medical sociologist Joseph Lella joined the department. Two years later, Margaret Lock became the department's first medical anthropologist. Historian of medicine George Weisz was hired in 1978. SSoM has gone by three names: Department of History of Medicine, Humanities and Social Studies in Medicine, and Social Studies of Medicine. Current faculty members include Annmarie Adams, Alberto Cambrosio, Jennifer Fishman, Jonathan Kimmelman, Nicholas B. King, Tobias Rees, Thomas Schlich, Andrea Tone, Faith Wallis, George Weisz and Allan Young.^[1] The department shares the former J.K.L. Ross house, 3647 Peel Street, with McGill University's Biomedical Ethics Unit.

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