You are here: Home / History & Philosophy of Science / Staff / Academic staff / Hans Pols

Dr Hans Pols

MA York University; PhD University of Pennsylvania
Room 435 Carslaw

+61 2 9351 3610

Hans Pols is interested in the history medicine, in particular the history of psychiatry. He has conducted research into the history of the mental hygiene movement, the treatment for shell shock or nervous breakdown in the armed forces during World War II, and on the history of medicine in the former Dutch East Indies and modern Indonesia.

Back to Top

Current projects

Hans is currently finalising a book manuscript entitled Masterminding the Mind: The Culture of American Mental Hygiene, which will appear with Harvard University Press. He is writing several articles on the treatment of war neurosis in the armed forces of Australia, the UK, and the USA. He travels regularly to Indonesia and the Netherlands to conduct research in the history of colonial medicine in the former Dutch East Indies, and the relationship between colonial medical practices and modern medicine in Indonesia.

Back to Top

Grants

ARC grant: War, Trauma, and Rehabilitation: The Army, Psychiatry, and World War II [2004-2006]

Back to Top

Selected publications

Hans has published on the history of the mental hygiene movement in the United States, research into child development, war neurosis, and the history of psychiatry in Indonesia.

  • "The Nature of the Native Mind: Contested Views of Dutch Colonial Psychiatrists in the Former Dutch East Indies." In Psychiatry and Empire, edited by Sloan Malone and Megan Vaughan. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.
  • "The Development of Psychiatry in Indonesia: From Colonial to Modern Times." International Review of Psychiatry 18, no. 4 (2006): 363-70.
  • "Between the Laboratory and Life: Child Development Research in Toronto, 1919-1956." History of Psychology 5, no. 2 (2002): 135-62.
  • "Divergences in American Psychiatry During the Depression: Somatic Psychiatry, Community Mental Hygiene, and Social Reconstruction." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 37, no. 4 (2001): 369-88.
Back to Top

Areas of teaching and supervision

Mental hygiene, child guidance clinics, mental health care, and mental health care policy

Back to Top

Other professional contributions

Hans Pols is editor of Health and History, the journal of the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine.