Reflections on a year at CGHH

Today we are delighted to feature another guest post from Namrata Ravichandra Ganneri (a Commonwealth-Rutherford Fellow based at the Centre for Global Health Histories (CGHH) and the Department of History for 23 months (22 March 2018 to 21 February 2020)), reflecting on her first year spent researching at CGHH!

Having spent nearly a year in the UK as a Commonwealth-Rutherford Fellow on the project ‘India’s Smallpox Eradication as a Global Roadmap’ at CGHH, a trip home was to be a welcome break from all duties. Or so I hoped! –a chance visit to my employers brought a novel assignment- a talk on my fellowship experience for peers and students. The talk comprised my thoughts on the transformatory impact of the fellowship, which commenced in late March 2018 on my life and career. Now that I am back from annual leave and ease myself into a routine, I believe that sharing these thoughts may also profit both the followers of this blog and the wider online communities accessing this post. What follows is a brief account of the presentation, and my reflections since.

My annual leave to India early February 2019 was to revisit the smells and sounds of my home country, meet family and friends, plus afforded a much -needed break from the cold British winter! Indeed, most of my time was spent catching up with family, yet I yearned to see my workplace having spent nearly one third of my life teaching at S.N.D.T. College in Mumbai. A visit to the college brought joyful reunions with colleagues and students, although meeting the new head of the institution also brought in a new assignment - a short talk on my fellowship experience so far!

There were mixed feelings as I ascended the podium to deliver a talk on ‘My fellowship in the UK: some thoughts and learnings’ on 25 February 2019. It was the same place where I had greeted and introduced several visiting scholars and guests to our institution in the past and was then trying to distil a year of somewhat heady experience of my life in the UK. Living alone in a foreign country was an important first though 2018 had been eventful in myriad ways.

I spoke to my young friends in college about the beautiful student- friendly, as well as touristy, city of York, as well as my experience of living through ‘Brexit Britain’. There was considerable interest in the Commonwealth scholarship scheme as I shared information about the masters’ and doctoral scholarships awarded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, and my own insights as a recipient of the postdoctoral Commonwealth- Rutherford Fellowship (which isfunded by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) through the Rutherford Fund).

I was fortunate enough to avail this research only fellowship, awarded for a maximum of twenty- three months, for the whole period , due to grant of study leave by my Indian employer. The Commonwealth fellowship enables my training at CGHH, a globally renowned centre on medical history which works closely with the World Health Organization (WHO) being a long standing WHO Collaborating Centre at the Department of History, University of York. Extraordinary support from my host institution and supervisor eased transitioning into the relatively new sub-discipline of history of medicine and health policy. Moreover, the Centre has attracted research scholars from several nationalities with whom I have developed both camaraderie and collegiality despite only a relatively short period of association. The excellent opportunities to interact and liaise with academics, policy makers and health advocates from all corners of the globe, from China to New Zealand to Finland as they passed through the Centre helped internationalise my own research. I spoke about the exhilaration of devoting all my time to reading and writing (away from teaching!) and realizing a long-standing dream of visiting the British Library in London. As I saw it, the chance to develop expertise in a different research area, working with newer material and archives was adding to my métier. Additionally enriching were the enormous opportunities to participate in University level events. An important high was the invitation to deliberate on gender and social justice as a member of the Equality and Diversity Committee (EDC) newly constituted by the department of History in 2018.

I was especially pleased recounting the experience of representing my country as well as my host institution at the World Health Organization (WHO) ‘Global Conference on Primary Health Care’ in Astana, Kazakhstan in October 2018, commemorating 40 years of the Alma-Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care. The trip created special memories especially as I met greats like Prof. Sharmanov, the architect of the Alma-Ata Declaration and observed closely the crafting of a global health agenda. Additionally, the visit to Astana offered me the opportunity to co-organise and present my ongoing research on India’s smallpox eradication programme at a prestigious WHO Global Health Histories Seminar on 'Immunization for Universal Health Coverage' at Nazarbayev University and address a wide audience including delegates present in the young city to attend the historic conference.

Being based in CGHH has meant representing the Centre in key meetings and at Global Health Histories seminars in various parts of the world, participating in wide-ranging discussions on global health across geographical regions as well as disciplines-public health, medical practice, medical anthropology, visual anthropology, public policy etc and opportunities to both innovate and invigorate my own research skills. As questions poured in both from peers and students about life in the UK and the higher education and research environment abroad, I marvelled at my own felicity- commenting and reflecting- and finally, looking forward to another, nearly a year, in the UK.