Activities
The Centre for Medical History hosts many internal and external events throughout the year as part of both academic and public engagement activities.
We regularly run one-off events bringing together academics, health professionals and the wider public to disseminate our research. Each term, we also run a seminar series involving undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics.
Centre Events
Centre staff members are closely involved in developing and promoting academic debate nationally and internationally through participation in conferences, workshops and symposia. Staff are also increasingly engaging more widely with professional and public debate on healthcare matters.
Join Centre for Medical History researchers and discover how they are investigating key issues in modern day life and how you can be part of change and innovation.
If you would like to join the mailing list to hear about the Centre's events, please email Kate Fisher on K.Fisher@exeter.ac.uk.
Premodern Pregnancy and Fertility
Saturday 25 January 2025
Catherine Rider and Sarah Toulalan hold a workshop on premodern pregnancy and fertility at the (Mis)Conceptions show in London, a 4-day exhibition focused on the women's and fertility health space.
Details here: https://www.misconceptionsproject.org/exhibition
The End, and What Comes After
Saturday 18 January 2025
Laura Salisbury, Dora Vargha and colleagues have published ‘The End, and What Comes After’ in The Lancet. This short essay explores what endings enable in terms of global health interventions, but which perspectives get side-lined or forgotten when the end is prioritised.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)00044-3/abstract
The register of medical practitioners in England, Wales and Ireland 1500-1715
Thursday 8 August 2024
Jonathan Barry and Peter Elmer have published 13 county studies, arising from their 2012-18 Wellcome award (helped by Alun Withey). The results so far (covering much of southern/western England) can be found at the project website at https://practitioners.exeter.ac.uk/. In the next year they should add county studies for much of the midlands and they are working on London/Middlesex/Surrey. They also hope to complete the register for Ireland in 2025.
Jonathan Barry has also published online and open access volumes in the Occasional Publications series of Bristol Record Society, found at https://bristolrecordsociety.org/publications/brs-occasional-publications/.
Shame and Medical History Seminar Series
Thursday 8 February 2024
Dr Jennifer Evans (University of Hertfordshire) – ‘‘He was ashamed to let me know of it, and thought to have got cured otherwise without my knowledge’: Medical writer’s quibbles about genitourinary patients in early modern England.’
Thursday 23 November 2023
Professor Laura Kelly (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow) – ‘Shame in Narratives of Reproductive and Sexual Health in Twentieth-century Ireland’.
Thursday 4 May 2023
Dr Michael Brown (Lancaster University) – ‘Bodily Shame in Romantic Surgery’.
Thursday 9 March 2023
Dr Fred Cooper (University of Exeter) – ‘Loneliness and Shame: Towards a Historical Genealogy.’
Thursday 9 February 2023
Fred Cooper, Shame and Medical History WCCEH Boardroom.
Thursday 5 May 2022
Dr Anne Hanley (University of Birmingham) – ‘I am polluted to the marrow, soaked in abomination!’ Shame and Sexual Health in Modern Britain.’
Summer School with the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in The Renaissance
11-14 July 2023, Domus Comeliana, Pisa.
Summer School: Intensity and the Grades of Nature. Heat, Colour, and Sound in the Ordering of Pre-Modern Cosmos: 1200-1600.
Held in the stunning premises and terrace of the Domus Comeliana, this summer school will explore how heat, colour, and sound have been used, conceptualised and graded in the pre-modern cosmos shaping both disciplines of knowledge and everyday life.
View the Centre website for full details
VivaMente Conference Grant Awarded
Monday 22 - Tuesday 23 May 2023
Catherine Rider and Sarah Toulalan have been awarded a VivaMente conference grant by the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance in Pisa, to organise a conference on ‘Fertility, Medicine and the Body: Theory and Practice across the Premodern World’. Additional sponsorship has been provided by the Department of Archaeology and History at Exeter. Their aim is to address a broad spectrum of issues to do with fertility (and infertility), with a particular focus on the transmission of ideas between Europe, the Islamicate world, and beyond. To this end, it will bring together scholars working on different periods, regions and cultures, which are often studied separately. Read more
Connecting Three Worlds
Wednesday 25 January 2023
Lu Chen, Andrea Espinoza Carvajal, and Sebastian Fonseca retell the history of global health during the Cold War, focusing on the socialist world. These presentations cover reproductive health, mass vaccination campaigns, and insurgent health services across Asia and the Americas.
Sexology and the Histories of Sexuality
Tuesday 6 December 2022
A Workshop and Seminar with Ben Miller (Bad Gays podcast) and Dr Kate Davison (University of Edinburgh) followed by wine reception:
"Queer Pavlovians: Sex, Psychiatry and the Cold War" by Dr Kate Davison (University of Edinburgh)
"Harry Hay and the Primitivist Origins of the Social Construction Theory of Sexuality" by Ben Miller (Freie Universität Berlin)
Sexual Histories and their Publics: The Podcasting Journey of Ben Miller (Bad Gays podcast) in conversation with Dr Kate Davison (University of Edinburgh)
Details | University of Exeter
Whose stories? Sharing the authorship of medical histories of World War 1
Thursday 26 April 2018 at 17.30, Reed Hall, University of Exeter.
Exeter University’s Centre for Medical History and Exeter Local History Society supported a commemoration of Reed Hall’s hospital past and the contribution of doctors and nurses who worked there.
Reed Hall, then called Streatham Hall, housed injured soldiers between 1917 and 1919 and was one of Exeter’s seven temporary wartime treatment centres for troops. Researchers from the Centre for Medical History and Exeter Local History Society have uncovered incredible first-hand accounts from those accommodated in the hospitals, as well as from medical staff who worked there. A heritage plaque was dedicated and installed on Reed Hall to mark this history and the ceremony was attended by Exeter’s Lord Mayor and relatives of those who were treated. More details can be found from the following webpage: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/research/title_654087_en.html
Mark Jackson shortlisted for The British Society for the History of Science 2015 Dingle Prize
Mark Jackson's publication The History of Medicine: A Beginner's Guide (ONEWORLD, 2014) has been shortlisted for the 2015 Dingle Prize, awarded by the British Society for the History of Science.
The Dingle Prize is offered for the best book in the history of science, technology, and medicine, first published in English in 2013 or 2014, which is accessible to a wide audience of non-specialists.
BBC Radio 3 selects Exeter Medical Historian as a new generation broadcaster
Dr Alun Withey from the Centre for Medical History has been chosen by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) as one of the ten academics named as part of the New Generation Thinkers 2014 scheme.
The ten winners will spend a year working with Radio 3 presenters and producers to develop their research and ideas into broadcasts. They will make their debut appearance on BBC Radio 3's arts and ideas programme, Free Thinking, on successive editions beginning Tuesday 10 June and will be invited to make regular contributions to the network throughout the year. They will deliver talks at Radio 3's annual Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at the Sage, Gateshead in November 2014.
Alun is an expert in early modern medical history, specialising in the history of medicine in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Wales. His ideas for programming are based on the medical world of early modern England 1500-1715 including the cultural history of the beard. Read more over at the University of Exeter news page.
The Routledge History of Sex and the Body chosen as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles for 2013
Dr Sarah Toulalan and Professor Kate Fisher's co-edited book The Routledge History of Sex and the Body 1500 to Present has been picked as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2013.
CHOICE subject editors select the most significant titles reviewed throughout the year and publish the list of outstanding titles in the January edition of the journal.
The publication, which was reviewed in the September 2013 edition, received positive reviews including:
‘With abundant and appropriate citations and a rich bibliography, this volume will be indispensable for students and scholars interested in the history of sexuality and the body.’ S. L. Harp, University of Akron
'Physick and the Family' wins EAHMH Book Prize 2013
Centre Research Fellow Dr Alun Withey's book 'Physick and the Family: Health, Medicine and Care in Wales, 1600–1750' has won a major European book prize. The award, given biennially by the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, is presented for the best medical history monograph published in the four years preceding the award. This is only the second time that the prize has been awarded, and the first for a work of British history.
Stress – a modern day issue?
Today, many people consider stress to be part of life, yet most of us have little understanding of what the concept means or where it comes from.
In his new book The Age of Stress, University of Exeter historian Professor Mark Jackson explores the history of scientific studies of stress and how stress became a buzzword of the modern world.
Read more over at the University of Exeter news page.
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