Health, Disease & Population
Health, disease & population brings together researchers interrogating the scientific history of infectious diseases with those researching the public health policies & regulations through which infectious diseases have historically been managed. Its two major projects are ‘Rethinking Medico-Legal Borders: From international to internal histories’ and ‘A History of Viral Hepatitis: Science & Medicine in the 20th Century’.
Rethinking Medico-Legal Borders: From international to internal histories
The response to COVID-19 has starkly revealed the significance of internal movement and its regulation. Yet the focus of scholarship on medico-legal border control remains almost exclusively on international movement. This project addresses that major gap by researching the regulation of internal movement in past and present pandemic times, with a focus on plague, influenza, SARS and coronavirus in Australia, and in comparison with Hong Kong. Bringing law and history together, this project seeks to clarify how internal movement has been, and can best be, lawfully regulated.
The project is funded by an Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative grant (SR200200683). Project members: Professor Alison Bashford (History), Professor Jane McAdam (Law), Chi Chi Huang, Tiarne Barratt, Regina Jefferies.
Image: ‘Arrival at Quarantine Camp, Wallangarra, 1919,’ [Brisbane]: John Oxley Library, SL Queensland, 2006).
Expanding Frontiers: Reimagining Medicine and Hygiene in Japan’s Wartime Empire (1930s–1945)
Japan’s wartime campaigns to control infectious diseases in its occupied areas in East and Southeast Asia were expansive and rigorously executed, yet they have received relatively little scholarly attention. Drawing on extensive archival evidence from occupied Shanghai (1937–1945), Hong Kong (late 1941–1945), and Singapore (1942–1945). This ongoing research challenges this oversight by not only analysing what Japan did and why, but by delving into the complex, unstable networks of collaboration that underpinned these infectious disease control programs. By situating my work at the intersections of medicine and war, colonial medicine, and Japanese imperialism, this research aims to open new avenues for understanding not only Japan’s commitment to infectious disease control during wartime but also the broader dynamics of imperial governance.
This PhD project is led by PhD student Cong Liu, who began her doctoral studies in May 2024, and is funded by an UIPA Scholarship. Thesis co-supervised by Joel Wing-Lun and Alison Bashford
Image: ‘Request for assistance in various aspects to the epidemic prevention team and extending facilities.’ Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR), Ref. B05015318400, Miscellaneous Documents Relating to the Dojinkai Foundation/Administration of Epidemic Prevention Affairs, Vol. 3 (H.4.2.0.3-5_003) (Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
A History of Viral Hepatitis: Science & Medicine in the 20th Century
The COVID-19 pandemic made the viral diagnostics vocabulary of antibodies, antigens and variant sequences commonplace. ‘Rapid’ virological testing however, only became available for clinical use from the early 1970s, initially for hepatitis B. Through an investigation of viral hepatitis research in the twentieth century, this project traced the development of the concept of a virus and the transformation of viral diagnostics. It explored the contribution of population genetics and blood banking to that history, demonstrated the power of both basic and applied research, and revealed how viral disease came to be known before the emergence of HIV/AIDS and concurrent with it.
This PhD project was led by Dr Michelle Bootcov and funded by an RTP Scholarship and a 2021 Dan David Prize Scholarship Award.
Image: ‘Blood Bank Testing’ Bernard Gotfryd photograph collection (Library of Congress), LC-GB05- 8119 [P&P].
A 20th-Century History of Dermatoglyphics
Fingerprint technologies are a key legacy of Francis Galton’s late-nineteenth century statistical work. They were foundational to modern biometric states and are now embedded in global commercial, forensic, regulatory and cyber infrastructures. The focus of this project is another, lesser-known Galtonian legacy, ‘dermatoglyphics’: the morphological, genetic, geometric, and statistical study not just of fingerprints, but of the whole human hand. It is not in the least a study of a marginal ‘pseudo-science’. On the contrary, hand biomarkers were researched by some of the most distinguished medical geneticists of the twentieth century. This history of dermatoglyphics will be the first transnational and century-long critical history of an intriguing medico-anthropological sub-discipline.
This Discovery Project (DP250102063) is funded by the Australian Research Council. Professor Alison Bashford is the Chief Investigator and Dr Michelle Bootcov is a Postdoctoral Fellow on this project.
Image: Right handprint, identifying analytical characteristics. Harris Hawthorne Wilder, ‘Palm and Sole Studies,’ Biological Bulletin 30, no. 2 (1916): 139.
Our People
Tiarne Barratt
Tiarne Barratt is a HDR candidate in the School of Humanities and Languages, UNSW. Her doctoral work investigates the role of history in COVID-19 new and traditional medias and the strategic function of history in pandemic responses. Her master’s research was a history of contraceptive sterilisation in Australia, looking at the voluntary uptake of tubal ligation and vasectomy procedures in the twentieth century. Other recent projects include research on Australia’s border control practices in the 1919 influenza pandemic.
Tiarne Barratt is a researcher on the ARC SRI project, “Rethinking Medico-Legal Borders: From international to internal histories” Contact: t.barratt@unsw.edu.au
Cong Liu
Cong Liu is a PhD student in the School of Humanities and Languages. Her research investigates Japan’s infectious disease control programs in East and Southeast Asia during wartime (1930s to 1945).
Contact: cong.liu4@unsw.edu.au
Alison Bashford
Professor Alison Bashford is Laureate Professor in History and Director of the Laureate Centre for History & Population. She also directs the New Earth Histories Research Program. Her work connects the history of science, global history, and environmental history into new assessments of the modern world, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.
Jane McAdam
Professor Jane McAdam AO is Scientia Professor of Law and Director of the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW. Professor McAdam has published widely in international refugee law and forced migration, with a particular focus on climate change, disasters and displacement. She has special expertise on cross-border relocations, especially in the Pacific, and a keen interest in the global history of refugee and migration law. Her research has been supported by a number of Australian Research Council grants, including a prestigious Future Fellowship (2012–15). Professor McAdam is co-CI of the ARC SRI ‘Rethinking medico-legal borders: From international to internal histories.’
Michelle Bootcov
Dr Michelle Bootcov, is a historian of twentieth-century medical science and technology. She is currently researching the history of dermatoglyphics (the statistical study of ridges and creases of the hand and feet) by anatomists, anthropologists, geneticists, and other scientists. Michelle’s previous project traced how viral hepatitis research contributed to the transformation of viral diagnostics and the concept of a virus.
Contact: m.bootcov@unsw.edu.au
Chi Chi Huang
Dr Chi Chi Huang is an environmental and medical humanities historian of the British Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her research interests lie in the intersection of transnational and imperial histories, with a focus on Southeast Asia and China. Her doctoral research on the production of British popular and visual cultures of Hong Kong explores the environment as commodity, the notion of an imperial ideal, and tropicality. Chi Chi’s next project takes the third plague pandemic in Australia as a starting point to explore the history of the Australian-Asian connection through lens of health. Chi Chi Huang is a postdoctoral researcher on the ARC SRI project, “Rethinking Medico-Legal Borders: From international to internal histories”
Contact: chichi.huang@unsw.edu.au
News
It’s World Hepatitis Day: Here’s how Hepatitis B research helped when Covid hit
UNSW Media, 28 July 2025
UNSW historian named 2021 Dan David Prize Laureate
UNSW Media, 16 Feb 2021
Exploration of ‘blood, genetics, race and rights’ wins Mike Smith Student Prize
Australian Academy of Science, 25 Nov 2024
What history can teach us about pandemic management
UNSW Media, 30 Sept 2021
Select Publications & Media
Michelle Bootcov, ‘Viral Spectres, Haunting Journeys’, Anthropological Theory Commons, August 2025, https://doi.org/10.21428/4566d66c.3362f9b4.
Michelle Bootcov, ‘The Present in the Medical Past: The Shaping of a PhD’, ANZSHM Newsletter, August 2024, 6 [By invitation for the column, ‘What is Medical History?].
Michelle Bootcov, ‘Robert Kirk: Blood, genetics, race and rights in the twentieth century’, Historical Records of Australian Science (2024), doi:10.1071/HR24023).
Michelle Bootcov, ‘Freeman, Joan Maie (1918–1998)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/freeman-joan-maie-33273/text41517, published online 2024.
Colagiuri, Stephen and Michelle Bootcov [Eds.], Stephen, Roger Wilkinson, Catherine Storey, et al, ‘100 Years of Insulin in Australia’, Health and History, 25:1 (2023) 92-112, DOI: 10.1353/hah.2023.a904714
Jefferies, Regina, Tiarne Barratt, Chi Chi Huang & Alison Bashford, ‘Regulating Movement in Pandemic Times,’ Journal of Bioethical Inquiry (Sept 2023), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11673-023-10292-1
Jefferies, Regina & McAdam, Jane, ‘Locked In: Australia’s COVID-19 Border Closures and the Right to Leave‘ (2023) 41 Australian Year Book of International Law, UNSW Law Research Paper No. 22-44 (Jan 2023) Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4318265
Barratt, Tiarne & Alison Bashford, ‘Lines of Hygiene: Pandemic Border Control in Australia, 1919,’ Australian Historical Studies 53:2 (2022) 284-307 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1031461X.2021.2005644
Jefferies, Regina, Jane McAdam & Sangeetha Pillai, ‘Can we still call Australia home? The right to return and the legality of Australia’s COVID-19 travel restrictions,’ Australian Journal of Human Rights, 27:2 (2021) 211-231, DOI: 10.1080/1323238X.2021.1996529
Jeffries, Regina, Border closures should not be Australia’s default response, The Interpreter by the Lowy Institute, 30 Nov 2021, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/border-closures-should-not-be-australia-s-default-response
Hicks, Liz, Jane McAdam & Regina Jefferies, ‘The federal government made it even harder for Australians overseas to come home. Is this legal?‘ The New Daily, 9 August 2021: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2021/08/09/australians-overseas-come-home-harder/
McAdam, Jane & Jeffries, Regina, Why the latest travel caps looks like an arbitrary restriction on Australians’ right to come home, Conversation, 5 July 2021 https://theconversation.com/why-the-latest-travel-caps-look-like-an-arbitrary-restriction-on-australians-right-to-come-home-161882
Jeffries, Regina & McAdam, Jane, ‘Who’s being allowed to leave Australia during COVID? FOI data show it is murky and arbitrary,‘ UNSW Newsroom, 2 July 2021 https://www.unsw.edu.au/news/2021/07/who-s-being-allowed-to-leave-australia-during-covid–foi-data-sh
Bashford, Alison, ‘Beyond Quarantine Critique‘, Somatosphere (2020) http://somatosphere.net/forumpost/beyond-quarantine-critique/
Bashford, Alison, ‘Pandemics and Borders‘ Scrolls and Leaves Podcast, Season 1, Episode 1 Featuring Alison Bashford, https://scrollsandleaves.com/chatroom1/
Bootcov, Michelle, ‘Bruce Small, the Mr Big of women’s cycling in interwar Australia’, Sporting Traditions, 37:2 (2020) 115-136
Bootcov, Michelle, ‘Australian female endurance cyclists of the 1930s and the commercialization of their athletic femininity’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 36:15-16 (2020) 1433-1456, DOI: 10.1080/09523367.2020.1713107
Bootcov, Michelle, ‘Dr George On Lee (葉七秀): Not just a medical practitioner in colonial Australia’, Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, 8 (2019) 82-101.
Glisic, Iva, Samantha Owen, Parisa Shams, Kelly Bailey, Michelle Bootcov et al., ‘Editorial. The Female Frame: Biopolitics and Wellbeing in Australian and Global Perspective’, Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, 27 (2021) 175-176.
Huang, Chi Chi and Alison Bashford, ‘Vaccine Requirements Predate the COVID-19 Pandemic by More than a Century,’ The Online Journal of the Migration Policy Institute, 6 April 2022: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/vaccine-certificate-covid19-history
Henwood, Belinda, ‘Pandemics and Internal Borders: Is history repeating itself?‘ UNSW Newsroom, 30 November 2020, https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/general/pandemics-and-internal-borders-history-repeating-itself
UNSW Media, ‘What History Can Teach Us About Pandemic Manadement,’ UNSW Newsroom, 30 September 2021: https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/social-affairs/what-history-can-teach-us-about-pandemic-management
Cover image: Kaines, Jack A. P., 1896-1975, ‘Quarantine Camp, Jubilee Oval’ [PRG 1638/2/99], State Library of South Australia.