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Arts & Science Program

Dr. Mat Savelli

Mat Savelli
Office:
Department of Health, Aging and Society, Kenneth Taylor Hall – 230
Email:
savellm@mcmaster.ca
Phone:
905-525-9140 ext. 24166
OFFICE HOURS:
Wednesdays 11:30am-12:30pm

Dr. Mat Savelli happily joined the Arts & Science Program in 2016 and co-teaches the Level I Inquiry course (ARTSSCI 1C03 / Inquiry: Global Challenges). He has also taught ARTSSCI 3CU3 / Alumni Experience Inquiry and supervises Arts & Science students conducting a variety of independent study projects and theses.  He also teaches a number of courses in the Department of Health, Aging, and Society on the subjects of mental health and illness.

Dr. Savelli received an Honours BA in History (minor in French) at McMaster before moving to the University of Oxford for an MSc in Russian and East European Studies and a DPhil in the History of Medicine. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Social History of Medicine, Slavonic and East European Studies, and BMJ: Tobacco Control. He has also co-edited several edited volumes (Psychiatry in Communist Europe, Palgrave, 2015 and Global Transformations in the Life Sciences 1945-1980, University of Pittsburgh Press ,2016) and textbooks (Health & Society: Critical Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2016 and An Introduction to Mental Health and Illness: Critical Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2020).

Although trained primarily as a medical historian, Dr. Savelli pursues research that covers a wide variety of topics, including the history of psychiatry in Eastern Europe, the global advertising of psychoactive substances, and corporate strategies employed in cigarette packaging. At its heart, his work examines how ideas of normality/abnormality and health/illness are constructed across time and place.

See Dr. Savelli’s article in the Hamilton Spectator — “‘Creating Efficiencies,’ Sacrificing Human Dignity”— here.