Medical Edinburgh and Empire

Wednesday 23 September 2026

6pm - 7pm 

No.11 Queen Street, Edinburgh, EH2 1JQ

Tickets £3

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A lecture exploring Edinburgh's medical communities and colonial legacies.

Scotland was disproportionately involved in the expansion, enforcement and administration of the British Empire. Scottish institutions and individuals profited from imperial exploits, gaining wealth and opportunity.

When the Edinburgh Medical School was established 1726, it became the Empire’s main educator for colonial medical personnel. On one hand, the connection provided an opportunity for students from countries living under imperial rule to train in Edinburgh. On the other, large numbers of graduates used their medical training to enforced imperial health policies and to maintain the health and economic viability of an enslaved workforce.

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Join us at the Physicians’ Gallery as our three speakers – Simon Buck, Roger Jeffery, and Theeba Krishnamoorthy – present on three aspects of Edinburgh, medicine and colonial legacies.

Chaired by Professor Catherine Labinjoh

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Dr Simon Buck

Dr Simon Buck is an historian of slavery and medicine in Scotland and the Atlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has worked with NHS Lothian, the University of Edinburgh, and the Scottish Episcopal Church on major public history projects concerning Scotland’s legacies of slavery and empire. He has published widely, including recent articles in Social History of Medicine and the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and is co-editor of a forthcoming edited collection with Edinburgh University Press entitled Race, Empire and the Edinburgh Medical School.

Professor Roger Jeffery

Roger Jeffery is Professor Emeritus of Sociology of South Asia, University of Edinburgh, where he worked from 1972-2024. His many academic publications drew on a series of funded research projects and focused on public health and health policy, especially maternal and reproductive health, access to medicines, and the organisation of clinical trials in South Asia. Since 2015 he has been researching the ‘footprint’ of India in Edinburgh: he recently edited India in Edinburgh (SSP Delhi and Routledge, 2019); a further volume, edited with Friederike Voigt, Perceptions of Empire (SSP Delhi) was published in January 2026. He has also developed a dataset of the lives of women who qualified as doctors in the UK between 1877 and 1916 and published on this in the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 2025. His chapter 'Edinburgh's Women medical students and the Indian Empire, 1886-1916' is under review with Edinburgh University Press.

Dr Theeba Krishnamoorthy

Dr Theeba Krishnamoorthy is a decolonial public health scholar, educator, and physician whose work explores the intersections of medicine, identity, and colonial history. Over the past four years, their research has focused on recovering the hidden life histories of early South Asian women doctors of the British Empire, examining how race, gender, and empire shaped medical education and professional practice. They have delivered talks and creative workshops on these histories at institutions including the Royal College of Physicians of London and the Whipple Museum of the History of Science. Theeba is currently a Caird Research Fellow at Royal Museums Greenwich, where they are investigating the hidden labour of early South Asian women nurses in the Dreadnought Seamen's Hospital.

Professor Catherine Labinjoh

Professor Catherine Labinjoh is a Consultant Cardiologist in NHS Forth Valley and honorary clinical professor at the University of Stirling. Since 2022 she has been the national clinical lead for Realistic Medicine, a policy area in Scottish Government concerned with personalised care, shared decision making and reducing harm, waste and inequity. She was a founder member of the equality, diversity and inclusivity committee at the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh and is currently an RCPE Trustee. She is Chair of Care Opinion, a non-profit online feedback platform helping health and care services listen, learn and improve.

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Free for students (student card required), under 18s (ID card required) and RCPE Fellows or Members.

Please email library@rcpe.ac.uk if you are a student, under 18, RCPE Fellow or Member and would like to be added to the attendee list.