Visiting Speaker Series
Dr. Eric Arts is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in HIV Pathogenesis and Viral Control in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, where his research focuses on viral evolution, pathogenesis, and global pandemic dynamics. With a distinguished career at the forefront of virology – and thriving Arts Lab as part of Western’s Pathogen Research Centre – Dr Arts brings deep molecular insight into how pathogens emerge, mutate, and adapt within human populations. His lecture bridges modern scientific inquiry with historical analysis to examine how geopolitics, trade, and human exploitation have shaped major pestilences across half a millennium. By connecting the biological realities of viral control with centuries of historical context, Dr. Arts offers medical faculty, students, and historians a unique and vital perspective on the historical and enduring intersection of disease and society.
- Event Poster (PDF, 8MB)
About the Visiting Speaker Series
Every autumn a distinguished medical historian is invited to Western University to deliver a public lecture to medical students and faculty as well as interested members of the London community.
The lecture series was established in 2015 through the generosity of a donor impressed with the engagement and quality of medical student presentations in the history of medicine at the spring History of Medicine Colloquium at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.
In this spirit, this funding further bolsters medical student engagement with the history of medicine by bringing leading scholars to Western, significantly adding to the intellectual community and educational experience of students.
Past Speakers
- 2025 – Dr Deborah Doroshow, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York - “Involuntary Psychiatric Assessment for Children: Adjudicating the Thin Line Between Normal and Pathological Child Behaviour”
2025 lecture information and photo gallery - 2024 - Dr. Walton O. Schalick, III, MD, PhD, the Medical Director of the Central Wisconsin Center and University of Wisconsin–Madison and Clinical Assistant Professor at UW School of Medicine and Public Health "Silvester's Choice: Medical Ethics, Disability, and Innovation in the Middle Ages"
2024 lecture information and photo gallery - 2023 - Dr. Justin Barr, HPB/Transplant Fellow at Toronto General Hospital “A Stitch in Time: Arterial Repair and the Process of Change in Surgery, 1880-1960”
2023 lecture information and photo gallery - 2022 - Dr. Mindy Schwartz, MD in the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center “The Real Dr. Guillotin and Adventures from the Medicine of History”
2022 lecture information and photo gallery - 2021 - Erika Dyck, PhD, CRC in the History of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, & Maureen Lux, PhD, Professor of History, Brock University "Challenging Choices: Canada's Population Control in the 1970s"
2021 lecture information and photo gallery - 2019 - Dr. Scott Podolsky, MD Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard University
"The Antibiotic Era: Reform, Resistance, and the Pursuit of a Rational Therapeutics"
2019 lecture information and photo gallery - 2018 - Dr. Susan Reverby, McLean Professor Emerita in the History of Ideas and Professor Emerita of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College
"Insights into the unusual and revolutionary journey of Dr Alan Berkman (1945-2009)"
2018 lecture information and photo gallery - 2017 - Dr. Jeffrey Baker, Director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and History of Medicine at Duke University, Durham, NC
"Autism and Its Transformations The History of a Contested Diagnosis"
2017 lecture information and photo gallery - 2016 - Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine, Queen's University
"The Stethoscope at 200: A Revolutionary Device now Obsolete?"
2016 lecture information and photo gallery - 2015 - Prof. Dale C. Smith, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD
"Caring for the Wounded: How the Great War Medical Experience Shaped Post-War American Surgery"
2015 lecture information and photo gallery
