Professor Lucia Dacome

I would like to join the voices of protest for the planned closure of The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. As the other comments have already highlighted, the Centre has consistently been a place of excellence in research and teaching, and a fundamental point of reference for all those interested in the history of medicine across the globe. The decision to close such a lively and eminent institution is incomprehensible. I myself immensely benefited from having a postdoc there. The same has happened to many other junior scholars: doing research in a distinguished and intellectually stimulating research institution like the Wellcome Trust Centre has been of great help to many at the beginning of their careers. There may still be Wellcome grants offered to junior researchers, but having the opportunity to work in an institution that is leading in the field and gathers so many prominent scholars and visitors from all over the world, has proven an invaluable intellectual experience. This may be another area of unintended consequences (as Virginia Smith mentions in an earlier comment) related to Centre?s planned closure. I would like to appeal to the members of the Wellcome Trust to reconsider an unfortunate decision that will inflict severe damage to the field and beyond.

Lucia Dacome
IHPST
University of Toronto