Author: Atsuko Naono
Alternate names: Minzu
Bio: Dr. Atsuko Naono is currently Associate Fellow with the Centre for the History of Medicine (Department of History) at Warwick and Research Associate with the Centre for South East Asian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. After receiving her BA in Burmese Language from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and her MA in Asian Studies from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), she completed her PhD in Southeast Asian History from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in 2005, with fields in Southeast Asian and East Asian history. Her dissertation, entitled "State of Vaccination," focused on the colonial smallpox eradication programme at the intersection of South and Southeast Asia, emphasizing the importance of the colonial medical sub-terrain on the periphery of British India. Her book, a revised and expanded version of her dissertation, published in 2009 by Orient Blackswan, examines how the colonial medical establishment in Burma attempted to cope with the neglect that came from being a peripheral province under the Raj, in the context of peculiar provincial limitations of transportation, preservation, and legislation, on the one hand, and the challenges of large-scale Indian immigration, local inoculation, and indigenous resistance, on the other. It reveals the multiplicity of roles forced upon colonial civil surgeons in an underfunded and understaffed medical establishment, local medical officers often doubling up as field officers, laboratory scientists, veterinarians, and teachers, in the fight against smallpox, one of the most dreaded diseases of the twentieth century. Since her dissertation she has been involved with projects ranging from infanticide in nineteenth century Ireland to transnational health and fitness organizations and their youth wings in colonial Southeast Asia. She has a special interest in interconnectivity between new advertising technology and health propaganda and this has found its way into her publications on health propaganda in nineteenth century Southeast Asia and in her chapters on the propaganda activities of the Red Cross and the public health department in colonial Burma in the 1920s and 1930s, forthcoming in edited collections on public health history. Dr. Naono is currently working on several projects, including the health implications of the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia in World War II, animal health in colonial Southeast Asia, and the methodological challenges of writing about the history of indigenous inoculators in Burma and their construction in colonial medical narratives, publishing an article on the latter topic most recently in the Journal of Burma Studies (2010).