Manon S. Parry, PhD, is an historian of medicine and exhibition curator, specializing in the uses of the humanities for health and wellbeing. She is Professor of Medical and Nursing History at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (VU), and Associate Professor in American Studies and Public History at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Formerly, she was Curator in the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine, USA. She serves as Faculty Lead for the Health Humanites at UvA: https://aihr.uva.nl/core-themes/health-humanities/health-humanities.html

Professor Parry has curated gallery and online exhibitions on a wide range of topics, including global health and human rights, disability in the American Civil War, and medicinal and recreational drug use, with budgets ranging from $14,500 to $3 million. Traveling versions of her exhibitions have visited more than 300 venues in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Guam, the Netherlands, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She has served in formal and informal advisory roles for exhibition projects on health and medicine at the Mütter Museum, Philadelphia; the National Archives and Records Administration and the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; and MUCEM, the Museum of European Civilisations, Marseille, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, the national museum for the history of science, technology and medicine in the Netherlands; and Vesalius Museum, Leuven.

Her research focuses on Medical and Nursing Heritage, Applied Histories for Healthcare, the Cultual Contexts of Health and Public Health Humanities. She has served as a member of the World Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural and Cultural Insights, and is co-author, with Nancy Tomes, of their first historical report, “Infodemics in Historical Perspective: A WHO Synthesis Report,” (Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe; 2022). Current projects include "Cultures of Evaluation," an interdisicplinary research agenda focusing on how health challenges and interventions are evaluated, and "Persuasion and Public Health: Learning from the History of Health Communication."

She is co-editor, with Ellen S. More and Elizabeth Fee, of Women Physicians and the Culture of Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) , winner of the Archivists and Librarians in the Health Sciences Publication Award for Best Print Publication in 2012 and author of Broadcasting Birth Control: Mass Media and Family Planning (Rutgers University Press, 2013), a history of health communication. Her current book projects include Medical Museums in Flux: Curiosity, Risk, and Relevance (Routledge Research in Museum Studies, forthcoming 2026) and, co-edited with Leni van Goidsenhoeven, Disability Heritage: Participatory and Transformative Engagement (Key Issues in Heritage Studies, Routledge, forthcoming 2026). 

Broadcasting Birth Control: Mass Media and Family Planning (Rutgers University Press, 2013)

Traditionally, the history of the birth control movement has been told through the accounts of the leaders, organizations, and legislation that shaped the campaign. Recently, historians have begun examining the cultural work of printed media, including newspapers, magazines, and even novels in fostering support for the cause. Broadcasting Birth Control builds on this new scholarship to explore the films and radio and television broadcasts developed by twentieth-century birth control advocates to promote family planning at home in the United States, and in the expanding international arena of population control.

Mass media was critical to the birth control movement’s attempts to build support and later to publicize the idea of fertility control and the availability of contraceptive services in the United States and around the world. Though these public efforts in advertising and education were undertaken initially by leading advocates, including Margaret Sanger, increasingly a growing class of public communications experts took on the role, mimicking the efforts of commercial advertisers to promote health and contraception in short plays, cartoons, films, and soap operas. In this way, they made a private subject—fertility control—appropriate for public discussion.

Parry examines these trends to shed light on the contested nature of the motivations of birth control advocates. Acknowledging that supporters of contraception were not always motivated by the best interests of individual women, Parry concludes that family planning advocates were nonetheless convinced of women’s desire for contraception and highly aware of the ethical issues involved in the use of the media to inform and persuade.

Reviews

"Manon Parry’s engrossing book, Broadcasting Birth Control, takes readers through the arguments early sexual and reproductive health advocates had when deciding what would be the best messaging to gain popular support for the use of contraception in America."
—International Planned Parenthood Federation

"Parry's clear, compelling, meticulously researched, and accessible book is the first to specifically examine the extensive use of mass media to garner support for the legalization of birth control during the twentieth century." —Heather Munro Prescott, author of The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception in the United

"By showing how the popular media helped win over a skeptical public, Parry deepens our understanding of the history of birth control . . . a subtle and persuasive reinterpretation." —Sonya Michel, University of Maryland

" Broadcasting Birth Control is jam-packed with surprising historical tidbits on ways the media has been used by the family planning movement since its inception. Manon Parry has done a major service to the family planning field by capturing the history of its early engagement with the media and the evolution of that engagement with all the pitfalls and challenges along the way."
—Conscience: The News Journal of Catholic Opinion

"Parry reveals to us many important parts of the [birth control] story we have for too long overlooked."
—Social History of Medicine

"[A] fine survey of the mediation of birth control." —Journal of American History

Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)

This volume examines the wide-ranging careers and diverse lives of American women physicians, shedding light on their struggles for equality, professional accomplishment, and personal happiness over the past 150 years. Leading scholars in the history of medicine chronicle the trials and triumphs of such extraordinary women as Marie Zakrzewska, one of the first female medical graduates in the United States and founder of the New England Hospital for Women and Children; Mary S. Calderone, the courageous and controversial medical director of Planned Parenthood in the mid-twentieth century; and Esther Pohl Lovejoy, who risked her life to bring medical aid and supplies to countries experiencing war, famine, and other catastrophes. Illuminating the ethnic, political, and personal diversity of women physicians, the book reveals them as dedicated professionals who grapple with obstacles and embrace challenges, even as they negotiate their own health, sexuality, and body images, the needs of their patients, and the rise of the women's health movement.

Reviews

A great introduction to the history of women in medicine. It offers fresh disciplinary perspectives on the diverse experience of women physicians in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. Scholars in women's history, the history of professions, gender studies, and the history of medicine will profit from reading these engaging essays."

— Sarah W. Tracy, author of Alcoholism in America: From Reconstruction to Prohibition

"This lively collection of essays will no doubt be enlightening to the current generation of medical students, historians, and scholars."

— Barbara F. Atkinson - Journal of Clinical Investigation

"Readers will find much to admire in this book. The individual essays, while diverse, are uniformly well written, well-researched, and impressively documented... Highly recommended."

— Choice

"The book would certainly be helpful for medical historians, of course, but also for any person—woman or man—interested in the past, present, and future role of women in medicine. Readers are rewarded with impressive scholarship and exhaustive, essay-specific bibliographies."

— JAMA

"Stellar edited collection... Read this book and assign it for class: it succeeds in leaving us informed,inspired, and amazed... It is provocative, deconstructs binaries, shows the personal tolls and struggles faced by these physicians and their use of science, nutrition, professional authority, and maternity (among others) as means to challenge male medical authority and culturally constructed gendered norms."

— Susan E. Cayleff - Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"This important volume delineates the state of the field in many aspects of the history of women physicians in the United States and points the way to the next steps in research."

— Kimberly Jensen - Social History of Medicine

"This collection of essays on the history of American women physicians from the nineteenth century to the present provides the latest, state-of-the-art scholarship on the subject... Invaluable."

— Laura Ettinger - American Historical Review

"A valuable addition to the history of women's struggle for fulfilling careers in medicine."

— H. Hughes Evans - Journal of the History of Medicine

Major Gallery Exhibitions

Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health, National Library of Medicine, 2008-2010

Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America's Women Physicians (co-curated with Ellen S. More), National Library of Medicine, 2004-2006

Traveling Exhibitions

Life and Limb: The Toll of the Civil War, 2011

A Voyage to Health (co-curated with Davianna Pōmaika‘i McGregor, Hardy Spoeh, Maile Taualii), 2010

The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and 'The Yellow Wall-paper,' 2009

2022   VU Nominee, NIAS-Lorentz Distinguished Fellowship nominee (1 nominee from Faculty of Humanities)

2021   UvA Nominee, Huibregtsenprijs for innovative research with social relevance), University of Amsterdam (2 nominees per university, 1 from Faculty of Humanities)

2021   Aspasia, NWO – Dutch Research Council/UvA

2019   Laureate, Comenius Network of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KNAW)

2015   Onderwijs Prize (Education Prize), University of Amsterdam, for the team-taught BA Course “The Craft of American Studies.”

2012: Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences Publication Award for Best Print Publication, 2012, for Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine, co-edited with Ellen S. More and Elizabeth Fee (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

2012: National Library of Medicine Special Act Award: In Recognition and Appreciation of Exceptional Service by a Contractor, for exhibition work.

2011: Costo Chair Medal, Awarded by the Chair of American Indian Affairs, University of California-Riverside, for contributions to the advancement of Native American issues, in recognition of exhibition work on health topics.

2011: National Institutes of Health Plain Language Award, Gold, for online exhibition “The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and ‘The Yellow Wall-paper.’”

2009: National Council on Public History Excellence in Consulting Award.

2009: National Library of Medicine Special Act Award: “For outstanding achievement enabling the successful conduct of historically unique interviews with Native Hawaiians and research for the exhibition ‘Native Concepts of Health and Illness.’”

2005: National Institutes of Health Plain Language Award in the category of Outstanding for the “Changing the Face of Medicine” Engagement Calendar, Brochure, Exhibit, and Web site.

2004: National Library of Medicine Special Act Award: “For exceptional contributions to the concept, development and production of ‘Changing the Face of Medicine’ which led to the creation of a critically acclaimed exhibition.”

Courses Taught:

Media Studies and Public History, MA Level. American Studies, BA and MA level. Courses previously taught include Introduction to Public History; Special Topics in Public History - Digital Public History, and Museums for Health and Wellbeing; Collection and Collection Management; Curating the Moving Image; History in Public Debate; Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll?: The Historiography of the 1960s; History Lab: Pictures and Public Health: Analyzing AIDS Education Media; Thesis Workshop; and Family Planning Media in National and International Context.

Supervision: Supervising BA, MA, and PhD theses on topics related to public history, women's history, history of medicine and nursing, health humanities, disability studies, history of communication, audiovisual archives, and medical museums.

Ongoing:

PhD: Hugo Schalkwijk (Amsterdam School of Historical Studies, University of Amsterdam/Historical College, Florence Nightingale Institute), “The Struggle to Reform Nursing Roles in the Netherlands, 1970-2020.”

PhD: Annelies van der Meij (Amsterdam School of Historical Studies, University of Amsterdam/NWO PhD in the Humanities), “Feminism and Psychiatry in the Netherlands: Tensions and Alliances (1960-2000)”

Completed:

PhD: Carl Deußen (Amsterdam School of Historical Studies, University of Amsterdam/Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne), “Collecting the Intimate: Gender, Desire and Material Culture in 19^th Century Ethnographic Collecting.” Defended March 2025.

PhD: Christie Ray (Media Studies, University of Amsterdam), “Assumptions and Experiences: How Museums Communicate Interactivity and How Visitors Engage with Instruction in the Museum Context.” March 2020.