The inaugural African-Asian Medicine Workshop (AAMW) hosted by Johns Hopkins University was a hands-on, interdisciplinary event with expert practitioners, researchers, and scholars specializing in medical practices and plant knowledge between diasporic Asian and African knowledge systems. This workshop fostered multidisciplinary collaboration among scholars, healthcare practitioners, and researchers, providing a platform to explore the cultural contexts, historical backgrounds, and scientific principles that underpin these remedies. The direct experience of creating home remedies in an academic institution and engaging with plant knowledge transformed how scholars engaged with questions related to contemporary issues in public health, professionalization, knowledge production, and environmental ethics from a decolonial and anti-colonial perspective.
GUEST SPEAKERS
The workshop featured Professor Anke Weisheit, who is the founder of Pharm-Bio Technology and Traditional Medicine Center (PHARMBIOTRAC), Mbarara University of Science & Technology (MUST), and Dr. Thalia Micah, a Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, and the founder and CEO of Institute of Integrative Health Specialists and Holistic Wellness Center, LLC. Both speakers provided recipes, ingredients, and equipment for three sessions. Dr. Nicole Labruto organized a foraging trip led by foraging master Nick Spero.
Dr. Lan A. Li
Organizer
Assistant Professor
Department of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Prof. Anke Weisheit
Guest Speaker
Chair of Innovation, Founder
Pharm-Bio Technology and Traditional Medicine Center (PHARMBIOTRAC), Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST)
Dr. Thalia L. Micah
Guest Speaker
CEO, Founder
Institute of Integrative Health Specialists and Holistic Wellness Center, LLC
Healing Village
Dr. Nicole Labruto
Organizer
Assistant Research Professor, Department of Anthropology; Director, Program in Medicine, Science, and the Humanities
Johns Hopkins University
OUR PARTICIPANTS
Over two dozen participants represented fields within and beyond the academy, including the history of medicine, anthropology, bioethics, sociology, architecture, psychology, religion, life sciences, and tech. From within the Hopkins community, participants included members of the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, the School of Public Health, the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and the Sheridan Libraries. Others traveled from Swarthmore College, Drew University, and Towson University. The workshop inspired a curiosity about home remedies from their own families. Some participants reported that the workshop changed their understanding of and relationship to plant medicine. New preparations of familiar plants introduced novel embodied sensations and therapeutic effects. Others came away with a new understanding of archive making in the history of medicine in colonial Africa.
SPONSORED BY
The Department of the History of Medicine (SOM)
The Medicine, Science Humanities Program (KSAS)
Center for Africana Studies (KSAS)
Program in East Asian Studies (KSAS)
Pharm-Bio Technology and Traditional Medicine Center (PHARMBIOTRAC), Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST)
Institute of Integrative Health Specialists and Holistic Wellness Center, LLC
