Research Interests

The history of traumatic brain injuries and concussions; Physiology in the Anglo-American World in modernity; The politics of neuroscience; the History of Disturbances of Consciousness; the Patient in Medical History

Bio

Stephen T. Casper is a historian of medicine whose work investigates the cultural, scientific, and political dimensions of brain injury, neurology, and the neurosciences in the modern era. His scholarship traces how medical knowledge has developed—and at times faltered—in confronting traumatic brain injury, chronic neurological disorders, and disturbances of consciousness.

His monograph, Punch Drunk and Dementia: A Cultural History of Concussion, 1870–2012 (under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press), explores how shifting scientific, cultural, and legal frameworks have shaped public understanding of concussion and its consequences. He is also the author of The Neurologists: A History of a Medical Specialty in Modern Britain, c. 1789–2000 (Manchester University Press, 2014), an account of how neurology emerged and professionalized in the Anglo-American world.

Dr. Casper has edited several influential volumes in the history of medicine and science, including The Neurological Patient in History (2012), The History of the Brain and Mind Sciences: Technique, Technology, Therapy (2017), and Empire, Colonialism, and the Human Sciences: Troubling Encounters in the Americas and Pacific (2024). He is also co-editor of the forthcoming Cultural History of Madness in the Nineteenth Century (Bloomsbury).

His research interests span the history of traumatic brain injuries and concussions, physiology in the Anglo-American world, the politics of neuroscience, disturbances of consciousness, and the patient in medical history.

Dr. Casper was born in a small town in Minnesota and has long been drawn to both science and the humanities. Trained in neuroscience and biochemistry at the University of Minnesota, he earned his PhD in the history of medicine at University College London. He has worked in neurology laboratories, conducted marine biology fieldwork, and maintains a deep affection for archives, libraries, and historic buildings. While he would prefer not to own a mobile phone, he is nonetheless on BlueSky.

In addition to his position at Johns Hopkins, he serves as Professor of History and Associate Director of the Honors Program at Clarkson University in Potsdam NY.