Lucky Tomdi PhD Candidate
Supervisor: Dr. Simonne HorwitzMy PhD dissertation explores the professionalization of African health labor within colonial and Christian missionary biomedical health infrastructures over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This project examines the silenced roles, agency, and contributions of Africans who across various intersectional categories worked to sustain biomedical healthcare in Ghana. It also interrogates the intersection of gender, race and class in the recruitment and training of local labor into the biomedical health service. This project challenges the dominant Eurocentric narratives which place foreign agencies at the center of development and sustenance of biomedicine in Africa. I argue that the work of African labor was central to the success and organization of biomedicine in Ghana. Understanding the type of work, the skills learned, the resilience and limitations of local health workers, all of whom contributed to the success and organization of biomedicine adds to our understanding of global health within local contexts.
Research Area(s)
- African history
- history of medicine and health
- race, gender and science
- history of hospitals
- health professions, and patient care
- medical humanities
Publications (Select):
Tomdi, Lucky. “Gender, Race and Class at Work: Enlisting African Health Labour into the Gold Coast Medical Service, 1860–1957.” Medical Humanities Published Online First: 17 April 2023. doi:10.1136/medhum-2022-012468
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel, and Lucky Tomdi. “Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) and Epidemic Diseases Vulnerabilities in Ghana: A Reflection on the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1920.” Thesis 12, no. 1 (2023): 101-122.
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel, Lucky Tomdi, and Kwasi Amakye-Boateng. “Discourse on Non-Communicable Diseases Interventions in Ghana, 1990-2018.” Journal of Basic and Applied Research International26, no. 2 (2020): 17-26.
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel, Mariama M. Kuusaana, Benjamin D. Darkwa, and Lucky Tomdi. “The Changing Landscape of Mission Medicine and Hospitals in Africa.” Christian Journal for Global Health7, no.5 (2020): 6-22.
Conference Presentations (Select):
Tomdi, Lucky. “African Medical Orderlies and the Evolution of Attendant Care in Ghanaian Hospitals, 1860-1957.” Paper presented at the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine and Canadian Association for the History of Nursing joint conference held at York University, Toronto, Ontario (May 29, 2023).
Tomdi, Lucky. “Gender, Race and Class in the Enlistment of African Health Labour in the Gold Coast, 1860-1957.” Paper presented at the 28th Annual University of New Brunswick Graduate Research Conference (May 06, 2022).
Adu-Gyamfi, Samuel and Lucky Tomdi. “Politics of Saving Lives: Race, Inequality, and Quarantine from Spanish Influenza to COVID-19 in Ghana.” Paper presented at the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA), 4th Biennial Conference co-hosted by HUMA – Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Panel 42.A: De-Humanising Health? Responsibilisaton and Racialised Space in Times of Corona, Hybrid Event, Cape Town-South Africa (April 15, 2022).
Tomdi, Lucky. “Worse Than Being Infected? Approaching A History of Non-Communicable Diseases and Epidemic Diseases Vulnerabilities in Ghana.” Paper presented at the 21st Annual University of Maine-University of New Brunswick International History Graduate Student Conference (March 27, 2022).
Tomdi, Lucky. “A Historical Review of Immigrant Health Labour in Canada, 1950-1970.” Paper presented at the 19th Annual McGill-Queens History Graduate Conference (March 11, 2022).