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Anne Harrington

 

Acting Chair, Professor of the History of Science
Ph.D. 1985, Oxford University

Anne Harrington is Professor for the History of Science, as well as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the department, specializing in the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other mind and behavioral sciences.

Professor Harrington received her Ph.D. in the History of Science from Oxford University, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London, and the University of Freiburg in Germany. For six years, she co-directed Harvard's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. She also was a consultant for the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mind-Body Interactions. Currently she serves on the Board of the Mind and Life Institute, an organization dedicated to cross-cultural dialogue between Buddhism and the science. She is also co-editor of Biosocieties, a journal concerned with social science approaches to the life sciences.

Professor Harrington is the author of three books: Medicine, Mind and the Double Brain (1987), Reenchanted Science (1997) and The Cure Within; A History of Mind-Body Medicine (2007) She has also published many articles and produced a range of edited collections including The Placebo Effect (1997), Visions of Compassion (2000), and The Dalai Lama at MIT (2006). She is currently working on a new book, tentatively titled, When Minds Fall Ill. Other research interests include the history of the neurological case history, and especially changing interests in the "inner world" of brain disorder; and the origins and larger significance of current visions of partnership between Buddhism and the brain sciences - so-called "contemplative neuroscience."

Professor Harrington's courses at Harvard include Historical Studies A-87, "Madness and Medicine," HS 177, "Stories under the Skin," HS 176, "Evolution and Human Nature," HS 171, "Narrative and Neurology," HS 273, "Freud and the American Academy," HS 275, "The Minded Body," and HS 278, "In Search of Mind" (graduate). She also teaches and oversees the required research methods course for History and Science undergraduates (HS 98, "methods boot camp"), and oversees the department's undergraduate track in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. Finally, she and her husband, John Durant (at MIT) co-teach a Harvard Summer School study abroad program in London, on the history of Victorian science, medicine, and engineering.

 

Photo © Susan Kreiter, Boston Globe

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