ProfessorConrad Keating

Conrad Keating is adjunct professor and writer-in-residence at the School of Medicine, University College Dublin. Based in CEPHR, he works primarily on the modern history of medicine, with a particular interest in global health and public engagement. Keating’s research interests centre on the interconnections between the social history of medicine and societal change, with a particular focus on decisive moments in global health over the past one hundred years.

Before joining UCD, Keating spent five years as visiting professor and writer-in-residence at the School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin. Between 2008 and 2018 he was the writer-in-residence at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford. His recent publications include the widely-acclaimed biography of the British epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll, Smoking Kills: The Revolutionary Life of Richard Doll (Signal Books, 2009); Great Medical Discoveries: An Oxford Story, which accompanied the exhibition ‘Great Medical Discoveries: 800 Years of Oxford Innovation’ for the Bodleian Library (2013); Kenneth Warren and the Great Neglected Diseases of Mankind Programme: The Transformation of Geographical Medicine in the US and Beyond (Springer, 2017); A Life in Translation: Anthony Cerami and the Rise of Translational Medicine, (Rutgers University Press, 2021); and Tore Godal and The Evolution of Global Health (Routledge, 2023). Keating has an on-going ‘Art of Medicine’ essay series on the history of randomised controlled trials in The Lancet.

Keating’s latest project, funded by Sightsavers and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is to advance our understanding of how to improve trustworthiness and trust-building within the field of global health. As a writer and storyteller, Keating together with other researchers across geographies and agencies is looking at how persuasive storytelling could play a greater role in combating the misinformation and disinformation that is designed to undermine public health programmes both nationally and globally.