The international workshop Breathing Contaminated Air: The History of Face Masks as a Panacea aims to reflect on the uses of individual protective masks from a long-term perspective. It tackles various contexts of face-masking, such as work, contagious diseases, and armed conflict, examining efforts to present masking as an effective, sustainable, relevant, and acceptable protective response. More broadly, the workshop aims to investigate to what extent the use of personal protective masks can be a component of nosopolitics (or, politics of the categorization of disease), and, as such, belongs to a more general process of “establishing mechanisms for medical administration, control of health, hygiene or food”.

More information and programme:
www.mfo.ac.uk/event/workshop-breathing-contaminated-air-history-protective-mask-panacea