Rockefeller Archive Center

Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports are created by recipients of research travel stipends and by many others who have conducted research at the RAC. The reports demonstrate the breadth of the RAC's archival holdings, particularly in the study of philanthropy and its effects. Read more about the history of philanthropy at resource.rockarch.org. Also, see the RAC Bibliography of Scholarship, a comprehensive online database of publications citing RAC archival collections.

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A History of Diabetes at the Rockefeller Archive Center: The Development of Oral Hypoglycaemic Drugs and the UGDP Debate

December 3, 2021

With very generous research funding provided by the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), I was able to travel from Scotland in early August 2018. This was my first trip to the RAC, as well as my first time in the United States. Having just finished up at a three-month internship at the Scottish government, I was thrilled to be granted time and financial support for archival research. This report presents a summary of my time at the RAC and how the material I accessed there has supported my thesis. For those interested in the history of pharmacy in the second half of the twentieth century, or specifically the history of diabetes, this report provides an overview of the history of the development of the first oral anti-diabetic agents. It highlights the debate that followed one of the most contentious medical trials in the history of medicine, the University Group Diabetes Program.

Biology and Medical Research; Mass Communications; Medicine and Healthcare; The Medical Letter

Philanthropic Funding of the British Social Sciences after World War Two

December 17, 2019

My research undertaken at the Rockefeller Archive Center focused on US philanthropic funding of the British social sciences in the post-World War Two period. In particular, I was interested in the significance of Rockefeller Foundation funding for the development of anthropology and sociology in British universities and research institutes. While the significance of the Rockefeller Foundation for the growth and consolidation of British social anthropology in the interwar period has been well established, there has been little consideration of this later period. Studies of philanthropic funding of the social sciences in the post-war period, moreover, often concentrate on the impact of the Cold War and the foreign policy objectives that are perceived to drive the patronage of particular research agendas, inevitably centring the US perspective. However, Mark Solovey, for example, has pointed to the multiple factors beyond Cold War politics that influenced academic perspectives, such as personal relationships, local dynamics, and transnational networks. Along these lines, by focusing on the attitudes and interests of the British-based applicants and recipients of funding from US foundations, as well as the foundations themselves, I hope to shift the focus away from US foreign policy objectives and towards the dynamics of the social sciences in Britain in the post-war period, as well as the transatlantic interactions between academics in these fields. This investigation of the relationship between US foundations and British academics is part of my broader project that aims to uncover some of the negotiations and compromises that lie behind the production of particular works and ideas in the field of social anthropology in the 1950s and 1960s.

Academic Research and Education; Anthropology; Rockefeller Foundation; Social Sciences; Sociology

The Rockefeller Foundation and the British National Health Service

December 18, 2018

Established on 5th July 1948, the British National Health Service (NHS) provides free-at-the-point-of-use universal health care to Great Britain's entire population. Though most industrialized countries now ensure some form of comprehensive medical coverage, the British system is structurally unusual in several ways: it does not require any form of health insurance; the government owns the overwhelming majority of the U.K.'s hospitals and clinics; and it employs a vast pool of employees comprising the world's fifth largest workforce. The service is also culturally and socially unique. It is celebrated as "the closest thing the English have to a religion" and regularly tops polls of what makes people "most proud to be British." Yet, the institution's acclaim and longevity is striking considering its scarce resources, uneven health outcomes, and the dismantling of nationalized enterprises across the world. My research asks why the NHS has survived for nearly seventy years, and, in doing so, highlights specific endurances to a postwar social democratic ethic in health care

Medicine and Healthcare; Rockefeller Foundation

Rockefeller International Health Division and Nutrition Studies

June 5, 2018

My dissertation explores the science of nutrition in Britain in the first half of the 20th century. Archival research in the United Kingdom led me to explore further the Anglo-American connections related to the science of nutrition, and ask how American philanthropy came to shape the European scientific community working on public health. The Rockefeller Foundation (RF) was the single most influential American organization in the establishment of British nutritional labs, particularly those in Cambridge, and was also involved in educational programs in fields related to nutrition: agriculture, natural sciences and bio-chemistry. Many of the key figures I study in my dissertation, such as Harriet Chick, Clemens von Pirquet, and Robert Leiper, were supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Understanding the nature of those American-European and American-British connections is a crucial part of my dissertation and will hone my contribution to the field of interwar internationalism and science.

Biology and Medical Research; Food and Nutrition; Rockefeller Foundation

Collaboration Across the Pond: Influenza Virus Research, Interwar United States and Britain

January 1, 2014

The 1918-19 influenza pandemic was truly a nightmare disease, a great natural event in the early days of the twentieth century. Historians report that it was the most devastating infectious disease outbreak since the plague swept Europe and Asia in the fourteenth century. The official mortality estimates of the 1918 flu continue to rise as investigators find new data. Based on recent historical epidemiology, the global deaths from the pandemic were between 50 and 100 million.

Film and the Making of Postwar Internationalism: Progressive Filmmaking at the Rockefeller Boards, 1934-1945

January 1, 2013

During November 2012, I spent time at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) in support of a broader research project entitled Film and the Making of Postwar Internationalism. The month-long archival research was focused on the role of the Rockefeller Boards [especially the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) and the General Education Board (GEB)] in cultivating ties to international progressive documentary film networks centered around British filmmaker and bureaucrat John Grierson. In this research report, I will detail the ways in which my archival visit to the RAC helped clarify the role of the RF and the GEB in inserting a distinctively American voice into progressive film networks of the 1930s and 1940s. Most importantly, the material I researched at the RAC helped shed light on the complexity of the Rockefeller interest in progressive filmmaking.

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