This project aims to analyze the global connections and circulation of knowledge, practices, traditional wisdom, and social actors related to the health/illness binomial between the 19th and 21st centuries in Brazil, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola, and Mozambique.

The historiographical approach will be transnational and interdisciplinary, within the framework of global history, aiming to highlight the flows that crossed continents and the rhythms of continuity and transformation of care systems, traditional knowledge, medical knowledge, health infrastructures, and public policies. The geographical and temporal scope is broadened, crossing continents impacted by global connections, which has influenced the way contemporary society is constituted. Thus, the research intends to contribute to the commitments of the UN’s 2030 Agenda, primarily engaging with SDGs 1, 5, and 10, by promoting epistemic, social, and patrimonial justice in the history of health/illness.

Health is understood as a historically contested field, where scientific rationalities, local practices, and power structures intersect. It pays special attention to the ways in which the categories of gender, race, and class have shaped the authority of knowledge, the organization of care, and the distribution of resources in different historical and geographical contexts. In doing so, it seeks to overcome narratives centered on the nation-state and understand how different forms of knowledge have been mobilized in contexts marked by social inequalities and colonial, post-colonial, and global dynamics.

By valuing diverse experiences and plural interpretations of health and illness, the project contributes to broadening the epistemology of the Global South, recovering historical forms of knowledge production with impacts on current practices.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JE_Dutton_at_microscope,_Gambia,_1902-3_Wellcome_L0037471.jpg