Irish Research Council Award: Evangelistic Agency: An Architectural-Informed Analysis of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) Hospitals.
Evangelistic Agency: An Architectural-Informed Analysis of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) Hospitals.
Researcher: Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi
Funding: Irish Research Council
This project provides, for the first time, an architectural-informed analysis of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) hospitals. The CMS was founded in 1799 in London and established its first hospital in Kashmir in 1865. By 1939, the CMS had seventy-seven hospitals in different geographical areas: Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Apart from Michelle Renshaw’ research on the missionary hospitals in China (Renshaw. 2005), the architecture of the missionary hospitals in general and the CMS hospitals in particular has been largely ignored. This research will document the number, location and foundation date of the hospitals that were founded by the CMS from 1865 to 1940 in a catalogue. The development of this catalogue is not only crucial for my own research but it will also serve as a foundation for all future work on the CMS hospitals, both in terms of the architecture and medical work more generally. Furthermore, this study examines the location and respective architecture of the four CMS hospitals in Iran. Analyzing the architecture of these hospitals, this research also discusses about the role of the CMS medical work in the British Empire Building. The core research questions for the project are:How many hospitals did the CMS built from 1865 to 1940, where and when these hospitals were constructed? How the CMS hospitals in Iran were designed?What can an architectural-informed analysis of the CMS hospitals add to our understanding of mission and empire?