What are the metrics and meanings that describe health: for individuals, communities, institutions, governments, economies, cultures, ecosystems, epistemologies, or philosophies? The WHA invites teachers, scholars, and activists to reflect broadly on the many possible meanings of health, to both include and transcend bodily and biomedical applications of the term in order to consider the health of our world and the history of our planet that brings us to a online conference July 5–9, 2021. Sessions will not run continuously, and will be scheduled so that some live content is optimal in a variety of time zones.
Our world has radically altered since the WHA’s canceled conference in 2020. The urgency of global public health crises, economic hardship, famine and food insecurity, political instability, ongoing violence, and environmental disasters demand immediate attention and invite measured analysis over long time horizons—a move along temporal scales at which world historians excel.
The fully online structure of this year’s conference opens up a variety of formats. The program committee encourages you to collaborate with your colleagues to develop live and pre-recorded sessions, which might include (but are not limited to): book roundtables that address a collection of related scholarship; author Q & As, ideally with multiple authors; workshops in which participants actively engage with relevant materials; e-posters; Baobab-style panels, live or prerecorded; and live discussions based on pre-circulated materials, either written or recorded.
Pre-recorded sessions will be due on June 5, 2021.
Pre-recorded sessions will be published by June 15, 2021, so that conference participants can view them and incorporate their insights into the live sessions in July.
The preliminary conference schedule can be found at 2021 Health, Globally.
Registration Fees
| Regular | Late (after May 15) | |
| Members – Regular | $100 | $120 |
| Members – Students, Unemployed, and Adjunct | $30 | $35 |
| Non-Members | $300 | $320 |
Register here for the World History Association’s 30th Annual Conference: Health, Globally
Pre-Recorded Video Sessions
The WHA is now accepting pre-recorded sessions from panelists for 2021 Health, Globally who wish to utilize this option. These sessions must be sent in mp4 format, which is the most common. You can choose to record your presentation direct from Zoom or PowerPoint or any other preferred platform resulting in an mp4. The length of your recording should be between 10 – 20 minutes, which will allow time for other panelists and Q&A at the end of your session. Reasons to pre-record include less concern about connection issues during conference and/or less anxiety about speaking live. For maximum participation and to properly complete session discussions, panelists of pre-recorded sessions should be available for live Q&A.
Pre-recorded Timeline:
*Notify the WHA by Saturday, May 22 if you are opting to create a live recording. Send the mp4 recording to the WHA by Saturday, June 5 via email at info@thewha.org or share the video via Dropbox or similar mail system to our email address.
NERWHA Grants
As part of its ongoing effort to support world history studies, the New England Regional World History Association (NERWHA) will fund ten (10) stipends of $30 each to subvent the participation in the World History Association’s 2021 Conference: Health, Globally of ten WHA members who are students, unemployed, or adjuncts. Priority will be given to persons who are presenting in one form or another at the conference.
Anyone who wishes to be considered for a stipend, which NERWHA will submit directly to the WHA in an awardee’s name, should send a Word document with a brief statement (no more than one page), indicating current status and outlining how you plan to participate in the conference, to Al Andrea at aandrea@uvm.edu.
Because stipends will be given out on a rolling basis, we urge early application.
Conference Scholarships
WHA 2021 Conference Scholarship for K-12 and Community College Teachers
Note: The deadline for these scholarships has passed.
Thanks to a few generous donors, the WHA is able to sponsor the registration fees for three K-12 teachers and three community college teachers who would not otherwise be able to attend the conference. The award is open to any K-12 teacher and any community college teacher who is a member of the WHA.
The WHA 2021 Conference Scholarships for K-12 and Community College Teachers are offered on a competitive basis and are reviewed by the Conference Scholarship Committee. Three K-12 teachers and three community college teachers will be awarded this scholarship.
Applicants must include the following: 1) CV or Resume (two pages maximum); and 2) a brief statement of no more than two paragraphs about why they need the scholarship.
The application deadline is March 15, 2021. Applications for the WHA 2021 Conference Scholarships for K-12 and Community College Teachers should be submitted directly to the Executive Director <info@thewha.org>.
Keynote Speaker
![[photo of Beatrix Hoffman]](https://archive.thewha.org/wp-content/uploads/B-Hoffman-Photo.jpg)
Dr. Beatrix Hoffman will be speaking on Migration and the Right to Health Care.
Dr. Beatrix Hoffman is professor in the Department of History at Northern Illinois University. She is the author of The Wages of Sickness: The Politics of Health Insurance in Progressive America (2003) and Health Care for Some: Rights and Rationing in the United States since 1930 (2012). Her current research explores the intersection of immigration and health care. To see her online exhibition, “For All the People: A Century of Citizen Action in Health Care Reform,” please click here.