Dr Lucia Pozzi

MA, PhD (Bologna)

Lucia Pozzi was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2017-2021) in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Her PhD research, under the supervision of Prof. Claude Langlois, EPHE of Sorbonne University (France), was focused on the history of the first papal statement on birth control, abortion and eugenics. Between 2008 and 2012 she was doctoral fellow of the Fondazione per le Science religiose in Bologna. In 2014 she won a grant of Friends of University of Wisconsin Madison Libraries (USA). Her postdoctoral project investigated how the Catholic Church modified and adapted itself to scientific modernity, through an exploration of its encounter with nineteenth-century and twentieth-century medicine. Her study thus bridged long-standing strengths of IASH, that is the research in the history of sexuality, and its focus on relations between science and religion, the topic of Prof. Peter Harrison’s ARC Laureate Project on Science and Secularisation (2014-2019).

Lucia’s recent book The Catholic Church and Modern Sexual Knowledge, 1850-1950, published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2021, is the result of this project. In 2021 she was awarded the Seal of Excellence Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions with a project entitled: Gender, Abortion, and Birth Control in the Work of Catholic Physicians in Europe. A Historical Perspective on Medicine and Religion. She is a member of the Australasian Health & Medical Humanities Network.

At present, Lucia is a member of IASH and is teaching for the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at UQ. Lucia has just moved her research focus onto the early modern period. Her new doctoral project focuses on the intellectual history of the idea of the soul with a focus on medical and religious debates on the immortality, gender implications, and Jesuit receptions of ideas coming from Asian missions. 

Fellowships and Awards

2021 Seal of Excellence Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions
Project: Gender, Abortion, and Birth Control in the Work of Catholic Physicians in Europe. A Historical Perspective on Medicine and Religion