Elizabeth Nelson

Elizabeth Nelson is an Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities & Health Studies in the School of Liberal Arts at IU, Indianapolis, and an adjunct Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies.

Professor Nelson earned a PhD in French History at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2015 and served as the Director of Public Programs at the Indiana Medical History Museum from 2014-2017 before joining the Medical Humanities program in 2018.

Professor Nelson's historical research focuses on rehabilitative institutions, such as mental hospitals and prisons. She explores how people carve out bold and meaningful lives in the most inhospitable spaces. Nelson is currently working on a collaborative book project on the final years and closure of Indiana’s Central State Hospital, inspired by newsletters published by patients with intellectual disabilities in the late 1980s.

Nelson also coordinates the Indiana Women's Prison History Project, a group of currently and formerly incarcerated scholars who are researching the history of prisons for women, eugenics and reproductive justice, and the health and well-being of incarcerated people. She is the co-editor (with Michelle Daniel Jones) of Who Would Believe a Prisoner? Indiana Women's Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920 (The New Press, 2023).

At IU Indianapolis, Nelson has offers courses on the History of Medicine, Disability Studies, Black health and mental health from humanities perspectives, and more.