Frank Stahnisch presented to the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK

At the recent international workshop on “Confronting Eugenics and its Legacies in Psychiatry” by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London, United Kingdom (Sept. 29, 2022), Prof. Frank W. Stahnisch presented findings on “Sterilization and Euthanasia: An Overview Comparison Between Germany and North America” to members and fellows of the Royal College.  His presentation was based on the previous SSHRC-CURA-funded multi-centre and multi-disciplinary research project “Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada,” from which a recent edited collection with Dr. Erna Kurbegović

had appeared as “Psychiatry and the Legacies of Eugenics: Historical Studies of Alberta and Beyond” (Athabasca University Press, 2020): “From 1928 to 1972, the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act, Canada’s lengthiest eugenic policy, shaped social discourses, and medical practice in the province.  Sterilization programs – particularly involuntary sterilization programs – were responding nationally and internationally to social anxieties produced by the perceived connection between mental degeneration and heredity.”  This international workshop was further joined by Professor Marius Turda (Oxford, UK), Professor Mathew Thompson (Warwick, UK), and Professor Brendan Kelly (Dublin, Ireland).