The scientific study of humankind progressed at a phenomenal rate during the twentieth century. From the ‘rediscovery’ of Mendel’s laws of heredity through to the completion of the Human Genome Project, the work of scientists was recognised, on a global scale, to have an intrinsic significance to human life. This was seen in international collaborative projects, endeavours which even succeeded in rising above the political tensions of the Cold War.

The effort to gather this knowledge and apply it to human life encompassed methods that ranged from the benign to the barbaric. The eugenics movement is often associated with the latter, with good reason, but there have been fewer studies of the response that this movement received from the groups that were marginalised under its ideology. This is a particularly significant issue owing to historians’ recognition that eugenics emerged with the creation of modern nation states, and the desire of these states to supervise the ‘national body’. In this symposium we seek to bring together scholars working on the following questions, with a focus upon eugenics and other knowledge systems that intended to use science to categorise and regulate humanity:

What evidence is there of lay communities guiding the direction and shaping the form of knowledge that was supposed to be the preserve of experts and a scientific elite?

How was the eugenics movement shaped by the work of academics and professionals working in other disciplines? What concerns dictated the practical research and work of those individuals working under the umbrella of eugenic ideas?

How were these technological, medical, and scientific advances translated into the everyday lives of lay people?

How was scientific, medical, and technological knowledge, received or resisted within the communities that were supposed to have been marginalised by it?

To what extent do these considerations open up the question of a marketplace for eugenic ideas, with the public as ‘consumers’ of science, technology, and medicine, and what were the implications of this environment for the advancement of research agendas through scientific funding bodies and philanthropists?

How was eugenic science woven into progressive politics, and how then, did social and political groups mobilise efforts to support or denounce eugenics?