The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were marked by the expansion and consolidation of multiple institutions of confinement—hospitals, asylums, prisons, camps, sanatoria, and quarantine facilities—which profoundly shaped health policies, care practices, and modes of governing populations. Widely presented as spaces of protection, care, or prophylaxis, these institutions also functioned as instruments of social control, bodily discipline, and the production of medical norms, particularly in colonial and postcolonial contexts. This international conference seeks to explore the links between confinement and health from a comparative and transnational perspective, bringing into dialogue African, European, and American experiences from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. It aims to examine the ambivalence of these institutions, situated at the intersection of care and coercion, as well as the social, racial, and gendered hierarchies they helped to produce and maintain. Particular attention will be paid to the circulation and appropriation of medical knowledge, to continuities and ruptures between colonial and postcolonial periods, and to the enduring social and political effects of regimes of confinement. By highlighting archives and African fieldwork that have hitherto been underutilised, this conference intends to redress a persistent imbalance in the history of health, long centred on European and North American experiences. By foregrounding early-career researchers and students from a range of disciplines—history, anthropology, sociology, and the health sciences—the project promotes interdisciplinary and international dialogue. It thereby contributes to renewing the global history of health and medicine, while shedding light on contemporary debates surrounding public health, social justice, and human rights from a long-term historical perspective.

The 19^th and 20^th centuries were marked by the rise of institutions of confinement – hospitals, asylums, prisons, camps, sanatoriums – which shaped public health policies, healthcare practices, and mechanisms of social control (Foucault, 1963; 1972; 1975; Rosenberg, 1995; Murard and Zylberman, 1996). Often presented as places of care or protection, these spaces also served political, economic, and ideological objectives, particularly in colonial and postcolonial contexts (Vaughan, 1991; Arnold, 1993; Bernault, 1999; Bashford, 2004; Morelle, 2019; Peiretti-Courtis, 2021; Le Marcis and Morelle, 2022). Although distinct in their functions (medical, penal, prophylactic), they share common logic: the discipline of bodies, the management of populations, and the production of medical knowledge (Foucault 1963; 1975). 

The hospital illustrates this turning point: in the 19^th century, it evolved from a space of charity into a centralized medical institution (Foucault, 1963; Rosenberg, 1995), becoming a site of knowledge and power where clinical practice, medical statistics, and the rationalization of care emerged. Integrated into hygiene and prophylaxis policies, it aimed to control epidemics (Murard and Zylberman, 1996; Bashford, 2004). In metropolitan areas, it served as an instrument for the standardization of bodies and surveillance (Foucault, 1975), while in colonial empires, it served to maintain the labour force and legitimize domination (Arnold, 1993; Peiretti-Courtis, 2021). Asylums, for their part, embody the medicalization of madness and social normalization (Foucault, 1972; Porter, 2003; Le Bras, 2024). In Africa, Asia, and parts of the Americas, European models are adapted according to racialized logic (Kelm, 1999; Lux, 2001; Collignon, 2002; Keller, 2007; Blanchet, 2019; Soler, 2024). Contemporary debates highlight institutional violence and the urgent need to deinstitutionalize such spaces (Lovell and Scheper-Hughes, 1986; Mahone and Vaughan, 2007; Gagnon, 2007).

From the moment they were established, prisons became tools of domination, forced labour, and health control over colonized populations (Bernault, 1999; Morelle, 2019; Le Marcis and Morelle, 2022; Soler, 2024), but also hotbeds for the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis (Bernault, 1999), due to limited access to care and other human rights issues (WHO, 2014). Quarantine camps, which emerged in the19^th century to contain epidemics – such as cholera, the plague, and sleeping desease (Markel, 1997; Bashford, 2004; Eckart, 1996) – evolved into colonial camps and then refugee camps, often associated with coercive health policies (Curtin, 1989; Packard, 1989). The recent Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics (Gomez-Temesio and Le Marcis, 2017; Le Marcis, 2021) have revived this logic of isolation and containment (Arvisais and Alalouf-Hall, 2020). As for the sanatoriums created to isolate tuberculosis patients (Packard, 1989), they appear as spaces of moralization and discipline (Murard and Zylberman, 1996). Having disappeared in Europe and America by the20^th century, they persisted in certain African contexts until relatively late (Gruénais and Pourtier, 2023).

These places of confinement reveal the ambivalence between care and coercion, raising the issue of a hierarchy of care based on race, class, or gender (Briggs, 2002; Peiretti-Courtis, 2021), as well as the circulation and transfer of knowledge between Europe, Africa, and the Americas (Vaughan, 1991; Arnold, 1993). Recent work on Indigenous populations in the Americas – notably that of Mary-Ellen Kelm (1999) and Maureen Lux (2001) –  enriches this dialogue by highlighting the interconnections between colonial power, health, and racialization. Similarly, contemporary research in the history of medicine and health in Africa (Ndao, 2008; Ayangma, 2022; Kanté, 2023; Mbaloula, 2024) opens new perspectives on archives, health practices, and the logic of confinement in African societies. Quarantines, inoculations, prophylaxis campaigns, and confinement regimes have often intertwined – in one context or another –  public health imperatives, population governance, and racial and gender hierarchies (Curtin, 1989; Markel, 1997; Kelm, 1999; Lux, 2001; Briggs, 2002), while sparking debates on commodification, privatization, and hospital governance (Prémont, 2017; Gagnon, 2012). At the same time, they invite an empirical discussion of the concept of necropolitics (Mbembe, 2003; Le Marcis, 2018).

This conference aims to explore the links between incarceration and health from a comparative and transnational perspective, by bringing together African, European, and American experiences and highlighting African archives and fieldwork that have been underutilized in the literature (Gruénais and Pourtier, 2023). The aim will be to examine the continuities and ruptures between colonial and postcolonial periods, the circulation of medical knowledge, and the social and political effects of institutions of confinement: prisons, asylums, camps, quarantines, and leper colonies (Packard, 2016; Henckes & Majerus, 2022). To foster this dialogue, we invite proposals to explore one or more of the following themes:

Thematic Areas (non-exhaustive)

1-    Confinement and hygienist science: public health policies, prophylaxis, quarantines, and the creation/transformation of institutions of confinement.

2-    Colonialism, colonial medicine, and social control: the role of medical knowledge in justifying and implementing confinement within colonial empires.

3-    Mental health and colonial psychiatry: psychiatric practice, representations of madness, and the treatment of mental disorders in asylums.

4-    Gender, race, and health-related confinement: intersectional issues in confinement policies (women, children, racialized populations).

5-    Prisons and health: health conditions in prison, access to care, and health policy in detention.

6-    Camps, quarantine, and epidemics: public health responses to crises (cholera, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, COVID-19) and forms of temporary or long-term confinement.

7-    Sanatoriums and therapeutic isolation: history of sanatoriums, moralization and discipline, persistence in certain African contexts.

8-    Archives, sources, and methodologies: critical approaches to sources on confinement and health, particularly in African contexts.

9-    Interregional comparisons and the circulation of knowledge: comparative studies of African, European, and American experiences; transfer and adaptation of models.

Submission guidelines:

• Languages: French and English.
• Proposal: title, abstract (250-300 words), biographical note (max. 150 words).
• Submission address: https://enfermentsante.sciencesconf.org
• Conference format: in-person in Dakar, with the possibility of hybrid sessions.
• Tentative schedule: to be determined
• Call for papers: April 15, 2026.
• Submission deadline: May 15, 2026.
• Notification to authors: May 31, 2026
• Preliminary program: September 2026.
• Conference: January 2026.

Organization and partners:

Scientific coordination:

Simplice Ayangma Bonoho (UdeM)

Delphine Peiretti-Courtis (AMU)

Mathieu Arsenault (UdeM)

Idrissa Bâ (UCAD)

Mor Ndao (UCAD)

Frédéric Lemarcis (ENS Lyon)

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