Dr. Julia Cummiskey

Biography

Julia Cummiskey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Her research interrogates the history of global health, exploring its limitations and potential, particularly in East Africa. Her projects aim to shed light on the broader historical connections between local and global health initiatives. Cummiskey is authoring a book titled 'Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global', which examines the nature of global health knowledge production and its relationships with institutions and communities. She is currently working on a project tentatively titled 'Selling Health', which investigates the communication strategies used to promote health in East Africa throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Cummiskey is particularly interested in collaborative projects that involve anthropologists, public health practitioners, and historians and aims to understand the dynamics of health communication and consumption behaviors in the context of modern challenges. Her selected publications include articles on the specificity of oral HIV tests, tuberculosis control in Baltimore, and the ecological experiment in Uganda. She has contributed significantly to understanding the historical context of health interventions and the societal factors influencing health in the Global South.

Research Interests