Sasha Mullally

Sasha Mullally holds a doctorate in history from the University of Toronto, where she studied Canadian and American history with a specialization in the social history of medicine. Dr. Mullally teaches a variety of courses and supervises graduate students in the history of medicine, history of health services, Canadian and American social history, women’s history, the history of the transborder Atlantic region.

Dr. Mullally came to UNB from the University of Alberta, where she taught broadly in the medical humanities, and held a cross-appointed position between the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. She has also held many visiting professorships over her career thus far, including a McCain Visiting Professorship at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden (2017), at the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy (2015), the Five Colleges Women's Studies Research Center (2015) at Mount Holyoke College, MA and at Suffolk University (2009) in Boston, MA. She has served in a variety of administrative positions at UNB, and is currently Associate Dean in the School of Graduate Studies. Her record of external service has supported a wide array of scholarly associations, academic journals, and national organizations. She is past President of the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine (2015-17), former co-editor of Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region (2012- 2017) and is now Chair of the Board of Canada’s National History Society (2019-present).

Dr. Mullally’s research explores the social and cultural histories of health and medicine in 19th and 20th century North America. Her recent book, co-published with David Wright, combines oral histories, published narratives, demographic data and H-GIS to critically examine the policies behind, and the immigration trajectories and experiences of, physicians who came to Canada in the mid to late 20th century. Foreign Practices: Immigrant Doctors and the History of Canadian Medicare (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020) argues that the national system of universal health insurance would have failed were it not for these international medical graduates and their contributions to health care. The book’s findings are reviewed in podcast interview for the Champlain Society (episode 115).

A second book project examines the social transformation of rural health in the North American northeast from 1900 to 1950. Through a critical analysis of rural medical life-writing, it describes the social impact of the shift away from home-based medicine to health care centralized in clinics and hospitals. This project also considers the regional and transborder movement of medical doctors, and offers a comparative framework for understanding key changes in rural health care, a framework inspired by new research in the history of North American borders and borderlands. Entitled “Unpacking the Black Bag: Country Doctor Stories from the Maritimes and Northern New England, 1900-1950,” it is currently under contract with the University of Toronto Press.

In recent years, Dr. Mullally has begun a new research project that examines the history of “therapeutic craft” and creative work in the early years of North American occupational therapy. With an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities of Canada and a project grant from Associated Medical Services (AMS) of Toronto, she critically examines early 20th century occupational therapy programs that utilized creative work as a form of physical, mental and spiritual rehabilitation.

Recent publications

Books, edited collections, articles and chapters

Sasha Mullally and David Wright, Foreign Practices: Physician Immigration and the History of Canadian Medicare (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020).

Geertje Boschma, Sasha Mullally, Megan J. Davies and Alison Phinney, eds., BC Studies, Special Issue: Arts, Crafts and Healing: Social Citizenship in British Columbia 202 (Summer 2019), 178 pp.

Sasha Mullally, “Health, Social Service, and Statecraft across the Transatlantic North: Expanding the Frameworks for Atlantic Canadian History,” Acadiensis 49, 2(Autumn/automne 2020).

Sasha Mullally, “Swedish Manual Training: The Macdonald Sloyd Fund and Education Reform in the Maritimes, 1903-1917,” Acadiensis 49, 2 (Autumn/automne 2020).

Sasha Mullally and Greg Marchildon, “Striking a Chord: physician publics, citizen audiences and five decades of health care debates in Canada,” in Solveig Julich and Sven Widmalm, eds. Communicating the history of medicine: Perspectives on audiences and impact (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2020), pp. 107-138.

Sasha Mullally and Ricarda Konder, “Writing as a Work Cure: Creative Therapies at the Founding of Occupational Therapy, 1905-1923,” International Annals of Occupational Therapy (May 2020).

Sasha Mullally, Geertje Boschma, Megan J. Davies and Alison Phinney, “Introduction - Citizenship Theory and Health Practices: Creative Work in the Contexts of Care and Rehabilitation,” BC Studies, Special Issue: Arts, Crafts and Healing: Social Citizenship in British Columbia, 202 (Summer 2019): 1-12.

David Wright, Sasha Mullally and Renee Saucier, “India Abroad: the Transnational Network of Indian-Trained Physicians after Partition,” Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945-1980, Pat Manning and Matt Savelli, eds. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), pp.15-31.

Sasha Mullally and Katherine Macdonald, “Call the Doctor?: Understanding Health Service Trends in New Brunswick, Part 1, 1918-1950,” Journal of New Brunswick Studies 8(2017): 41-68.

Sasha Mullally, “Marginally Relevant: The ‘Fathers of Confederation’ and Canadian History,” Canadian Historical Review 98, 4(2017): 727-741.

Sasha Mullally and David Wright, “Doctors on the Move: Physician Migration and Canadian Medical History,” Canadian Immigration Historical Society Bulletin 77 (2016), 1-5.

Sasha Mullally and David Wright, “Connecting to Canada: Experiences of the South Asian Medical Diaspora during the 1960s and 1970s,” Doctors Beyond Borders: The Transnational Migration of Physicians in the Twentieth Century, L. Monnais and D. Wright, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), pp. 230-256.

Sasha Mullally and Heidi MacDonald, “Arts, Crafts, and Rural Rehabilitation: The Sisters of Charity and Vocational Education in Terence Bay, Nova Scotia, 1938-1942,” Historia de la Educacion/History of Education 35, 1 (2016): 35-52.

David Wright and Sasha Mullally, “‘Not everyone can be a Gandhi’: South Asian-Trained Doctors Immigrating to Canada, c. 1961-71,” Ethnicity and Health 21, 4(2016).