Currently one of the Councilors of the International Society for the History of Medicine, Alain Touwaide has been the General Secretary of this Society (2005-2008) and later on one of its Vice-Presidents (2008-2012), the President of the International Association for the History of Nephrology (2005-2008), the President of the Washington Academy of Sciences (2007-2008), an Administrator of the Belgian Society for the History of Medicine (1991-95), and its Executive Director (1988-1991) and, further on, the Chair of the Board (1991-2001) of the Belgian foundation Sciences et Lettres.
He has been in the Scientific Committee and has organized panels and sessions in international conferences worldwide on the history of medicine, pharmacy, sciences, ethnobotany, ethnopharmacy, Byzantine and Renaissance studies.
In 2021, he has been appointed as a "Permanent Member" of the Scientific Committee of the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR), based in Pisa, Italy.
He is the Series Editor of Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean and of Medical Traditions, both published by De Gruyter (Germany) and an Associate editor of the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences; he is or has been a member of the Scientific Committees of the Acta Belgica Historiae Medicinae (1990-1994), the collection Arabic Science and Philosophy (2001-2003), the African Journal of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicines (2005-), the series Historical Botany (2005-2008), the Journal of Ethnomedicine (2005-2008), the Journal of the International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine (2002-) and Scripta (2006-). He has been a member of the Scientific Committee of the J. Worth Estes Prize in the History of Pharmacy (2010) and the Chair of the Committee of the Eva Kinne-Saffran Lecture in the History of Nephrology (2008-2015). He has been a Member (2006-2007) and the Chair (2008) of the Scientific Committee of the Reingold Prize awarded by the History of Science Society (USA). Furthermore, he is a member of the Editorial Board of Medicina nei Secoli, and of the e-journals Chinese Medicine and Culture, and Ethnobotany Research and Application.
Touwaide has been a reviewer of nominations and applications for permanent positions or funding related to the history of science and medicine submitted to the Haifa University (Israel), the Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Ireland), the National Foundation for Scientific Research (Belgium), the McArthur Foundation (USA), and the Wellcome Trust (UK). Also he has reviewed book-length manuscripts in the field of the history of medicine submitted for publication to Arizona State University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Routledge, Yale University Press, and manuscripts of articles for publication in the American Journal of Cardiology, Byzantion, Early Science and Medicine, Economic Botany, Ethnobotany Research and Applications, FORUM-Trends in Experimental and Clinical Medicine, ISIS-Journal of the History of Science Society, Journal of the American College of Surgeons, Journal of Ethnobiology, Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Journal of Ethnopharmacology and Ethnomedicine, Pharmazie: International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Taxon-Journal of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, and Vesalius-Journal of the International Society for the History of Medicine.
