The main reason I went to Switzerland was to finish researching and drafting my first book manuscript, Boundaries of Addiction, Treatment and Disease. I had one chapter left to write, chapter five, which I’d been saving for this trip because it was on Switzerland’s heroin assisted trials of the 1990s and their importance in changing international drug policy.[1] WHO Geneva Archives were unfortunately closed due to COVID, but I researched the UN Library and Archives in Geneva, which had some files from the 1950s to the 1970s on the UN Narcotics Laboratory, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and the UN Fund for Drug Abuse Control (UNFDAC).[2] I also looked at the papers of Andre Seidenberg, a doctor and later harm reduction activist, in the City Archives of Zurich (Stadtarchiv) in Neumarkt, about three hours away from Geneva by train.[3]
Inside Stadtarchiv Zurich - beautiful!
Interviews were another important strand, and I got to speak to a few figures in Geneva and Zurich who were involved in the Swiss Trials, WHO’s Mental Health Programme, or WHO’s current work relating to drugs and addiction.[4] They were kind enough to give their time and provided new insights enriching the archival materials - you’ll have to read the book to find out exactly how![5] I know I said this before but I’ll do a post later on the process of writing a full book manuscript, especially in global history. I’m still processing peer-reviewers’ comments on the manuscript: ouch, yes, but mostly grateful for reviewers’ speed and attention to detail – I just submitted a month ago!
An interviewee, mental health expert Norman Sartorius, has quite an audience in Japan
Spending a full month with historians, sociologists, legal scholars, philosophers, and ethicists from all over the world, I also learned a lot about building a community around you. What was wonderful about the Brocher stay is that I got to speak to scholars at all career stages. I learned from senior professors who are running their own research centres or departments about what drives them: how they look out for students or scholars in early career stages, how they manage larger collaborative grants and work with non-academics, how they communicate boundaries effectively and respectfully with editors/peer reviewers for the integrity of the work, all while managing their own research programmes and personal lives. I also got to speak to scholars around my career stage, sharing our experiences on PhD writing, publishing strategies, networking at conferences, vivas and defenses, even cooking healthy meals while busy with research. We had some exciting days out to Geneva and France as well – and of course, it’s so peaceful to look out onto Lake Geneva while finishing up chapters.
Day out in Annecy, France
Reviewing a submission for GSID's Forum of International Development Studies
Less than an hour after submitting manuscript, someone came to say hi and well done :)
In other news, my review of Sandra Bärnreuther’s Substantial Relations: Making Global Reproductive Medicine in Postcolonial India was released over the weekend, see here for free access…
https://academic.oup.com/shm/advance-article/doi/10.1093/shm/hkac027/6585579?guestAccessKey=b0609943-b8af-47c3-946f-bb772e3d4bcd[6]
…and I’ve been interviewed by Points, which is the sister blog of Social History of Alcohol and Drugs (SHAD) about my paper “Governing Drugs Globally” released in the journal’s spring 2022 issue, see here: https://pointshistory.com/2022/05/05/reiko-kanazawa/
Finally, we have been having quite a lot of discussion recently amongst the GSID associate professors on interdisciplinarity. In case you didn’t know, GSID has five programmes of which two, Economics and Education, are quite distinct.[7] I got to speak to Professor Carlos Mendez in the Econ Programme a few weeks back. He is a development economist (and GSID PhD graduate): see here for his work https://carlos-mendez.org/. As you can see, he does a lot of cool things with satellite imaging as well as quantitative analysis (I dropped into some of his seminars during GSID30th) – so mathematical equations and spatial representation to trace movement of economic activity. He had this way of explaining simply and clearly why development economists think and communicate in the way that they do, which I’ve always found fascinating since I historicise international agencies since the 1970s. In the spirit of continuing this interdisciplinarity discussion within GSID, I’ll be presenting on 26 May 2022 on oral history interviews, drawing from what I did in March 2022 in Switzerland.
Weather has been strange in Nagoya recently – don’t forget your umbrellas :)
Rainy weather animal friend
[1] For the World Health Organization (WHO), which conducted the independent assessment of their scientific rigour, the Swiss heroin experiment was one of two significant catalysts for the agency to push for health/harm reduction approaches to international drug control at the UN – the other was the HIV pandemic, which my final sixth chapter covers. [2] While UN and WHO are international multilateral organisations that communicate internally in English, Geneva is part of French-speaking Switzerland, so some of the documents (ie: orders from local tech companies to build the Narcotics Lab) were in French. [3] There are many archives in Switzerland, each very well organised. Stadarchiv is the City (municipal) archives, distinct from the Cantonal Archives (state-level). Both are administered in German, so I had to use google translate to correspond with the archivist to arrange permissions/visits, who were kind enough to write in reply in English. Mental note to learn a bit German and French at some point. [4] As we are currently in the process of setting up GSID’s Ethics Approval Committee, hopefully launching in summer 2022, it’s been interesting to learn from different disciplines on how interviews as “research with human subjects” are used. [5] The Swiss interviews sat nicely with the UK and India interviews - towards tail end of book. [6] I’m allowed to post this free access link on my personal website but not on social media – the rules of Open Access are still a little confusing. [7] I teach in Poverty and Social Policy with Professor Ito and Professor Ueda, which is grouped with Inclusive State and Society and Peace and Governance Programmes in terms of course credits and choice of supervisors.
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