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Martin Gorsky

BA PGCE PhD

Professor
in the History of Public Health

Room
S12

LSHTM
15-17 Tavistock Place
London
WC1H 9SH
United Kingdom

Tel.
+44 (0)20 7927 2136

Fax.
+44 (0)20 7637 3238

I hold a BA in History from the University of Essex, and a PGCE (History) and PhD (Social History) from the University of Bristol. After a lectureship at Bristol I moved to a research post with the University of Portsmouth health geography group, working on the database of British Voluntary Hospitals, 1890-1948. This was followed by a lectureship in history at the University of Wolverhampton. I joined the School in September 2003, with a Wellcome Trust University Award.

Affiliations

Faculty of Public Health and Policy
Department of Public Health, Environments and Society

Teaching

My main teaching activities are as organiser of the 'History and Health' Distance Learning module (PHM215), lecturer on the 'History and Health' Term 2 Module,  lecturer on the Term 1 module Principles of Social Research, and as a tutor on MSc Public Health.

Research

In 2003 I completed an ESRC-funded project on the history of British hospital contributory schemes (known today as health cash plans) since 1939. My subsequent Wellcome Trust research examined the coming of the British National Health Service from a regional perspective, and is entitled: 'A mass of separate expedients?' Hospitals, integration and the British health system, c.1930-c.1975. My broad interests lie in the history of health systems in the West since the late 19th century.  Among my recent projects are: an examination of morbidity trends since 1850 using sickness insurance data; studies of the pursuit of equity in policy-making in the British NHS since the 1970s; and an analysis of public health posters in Poland, 1918-90; and a study of Medical Officer of Health reports in London in the interwar period. I am currently working on my Wellcome Trust Investigator Award 'Health Systems in History' - an intellectual and policy history of the health systems concept in the 20th century.

Research Area
Health care financing
Health policy
Health services research
Health systems
Public health history
Discipline
History
Policy analysis
Country
United Kingdom
Region
Euro area
European Union
North America
World

Selected Publications

The 1918/19 Influenza Pandemic & COVID-19 in Ireland and the UK
Gorsky M; Harris B; Marsh P; Milne I
2021
Historical Social Research
Interrogating the World Bank's role in global health knowledge production, governance, and finance.
Tichenor M; Winters J; Storeng KT; Bump J; Gaudillière J-P; Gorsky M; Hellowell M; Kadama P; Kenny K; Shawar YR
2021
Globalization and health
'Public, private and voluntary hospitals: economic theory and historical experience in Britain, c.1800-2010'
Gorsky M
2020
The Political Economy of the Hospital in History: the Construction, Funding and Management of Public and Private Hospital Systems,
Introduction
Gorsky M; Pons Pons J; Vilar Rodriguez M
2020
The Political Economy of the Hospital in History: the Construction, Funding and Management of Public and Private Hospital Systems,
The Political Economy of the Hospital in History
Gorsky M; Vilar-Rodríguez M; Pons-Pons J; Doyle B; Nemi A; Hüntelmann AC; Hoffman B; Xu J; Mills A; Hibbard M
2020
See more Publications