Francesca Arena is a historian of gender and health.

She is currently a lecturer at the iEH2 and at the Maison de l'histoire.

She is an associate member of UMR 7303 Telemme:

http://telemme.mmsh.univ-aix.fr/membres/Francesca_Arena          

Francesca did her postgraduate studies in history at the University of Florence with a dissertation on the history of the Asylum of Florence. In 2012 she defended a doctoral thesis at the University of Aix-Marseille (Anne Carol) : "Mads to motherhood”. Theories and practices of internment around the diagnosis of puerperal insanity, 17th-20th centuries, France-Italy".

In 2014 she joined the University of Geneva, first as a post-doctoral fellow in the framework of the SNSF Sinergia project: "Lactation in History: a Crosscultural Research on Suckling Practices, Representations of Breastfeeding and Politics of Maternity in a European Context" (2014-2017), of which she was also the coordinator from 2016. http://unige.ch/lactationinhistory/projet

2020-2022 is has a member of the think tank of the FONDS UNIVERSITAIRE MAURICE CHALUMEAU - CONNAISSANCES DES SEXUALITÉS

https://www.unige.ch/fumc/50-ans/

RESEARCH

Medicine and gender in modern and contemporary history.

History of milk and breastfeeding.

History of mental health.

History of science: gender and sexualities.

She is currently working on a research project on the history of health from a decolonial perspective :

https://www.unige.ch/rectorat/maison-histoire/projets-de-recherche/projet-les-miroirs-inverses-de-la-virilite-sante-de-genre-et-colonisation-france-algerie-xixe-xxe-siecles/

TEACHING

Francesca Arena participates at the teaching of the history of medicine and gender at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva.

She is in charge of History 1, Course on the Reproduction Unit :  A history of the female genitalia"

https://www.unige.ch/ssi/pedagogie/5-cours-2e-bachelor-de-medecine/

and the course "Gender, health, inequalities: historical perspectives".

She responsible for  a Master of Medicine : "Health and Inequalities: Gender and Intersectionality".

Since 2018, Francesca is co-director of seminar "Gender and Men's Health: a crossroads between the human and social sciences and medicine":

https://www.unige.ch/rectorat/maison-histoire/actualites/seminaire-sante-masculine/