The Bjoring Center Has Named a New Director

The Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry at the University of Virginia is pleased to announce its new Director, Dominique Tobbell.

Dominique comes to us from the University of Minnesota, where she directed the Program in the History of Medicine, served as an associate professor, an oral historian for UMN’s Academic Health Center’s History Project, and an affiliate faculty at its Institute for Health Informatics. Prior to her work in the Twin Cities, she taught history courses at both the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University.

Dominique’s scholarship focuses on the complex political, economic, and social relationships that developed after World War II between universities, governments, and the healthcare industry and that continue to impact modern-day systems. She has taught a variety of courses on the history of 20^th century American healthcare and focuses on the ways nursing, race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability determine Americans’ experiences with and access to healthcare, work that will complement work already being done by the Bjoring Center.

In addition to a rich assortment of scholarly publications, Dominique is the author of two books: Pills, Power, and Policy: The Struggle for Drug Reform in Cold War America and its Consequences (University of California Press, 2012), and Health Informatics at Minnesota: The First Fifty Years (Tasora Books, 2015). She is currently at work on a third book—Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing (already under contract with the University of Chicago Press)—which examines American nurses’ more expansive roles in the post-World War II era.

Barbra Mann Wall will retire at the end of May 2021. We are most grateful for the outstanding leadership Dr. Wall has provided to the Center during her tenure as its director.