With my colleague Mathew Thomson, I am conducting a new Wellcome Trust funded Senior Investigator Award project to map and explore the Cultural History of the NHS. Since 2015, we and our team have been asking what the NHS means to people in Britain, and how it came to have such emotional and political resonance. A significant portion of this research is done working closely with the public, and their input is a key driver of our research agenda. The fruits of this collaboration will be captured in a 'People's Encyclopaedia of the NHS' and a 'Virtual Museum of the NHS' -- reflecting and restoring to history our collective experiences and memories of a British institution.
I recently finished Contagious Communities, a study of the impact of post-war immigration – and particularly non-white immigration – on medical research and healthcare delivery patterns in the UK. Looking at epidemic, endemic, behavioural and genetic disease (smallpox, tuberculosis, rickets and sickle cell anaemia and thalassaemia, respectively), I've uncovered deep connections between perceptions of the National Health Service and of Britain's immigrant and ethnic minority communities. My research also reflects strong continuties between responses to the migrations of post-war Britain and the to migration crisis Europe is experiencing today (as noted in a recent New Scientist review). For an overview describing some of my results, see: Wellcome Blog. If you would rather hear me talk about them in more detail, you can follow these links:
In the next stage of my work on migration, I am continuing to explore intersections between migration and the NHS, and -- I hope -- gradually populate what is a largely political history with individual stories, cultural portrayals, and social meanings. I will also add parallel studies of US responses to post war migrants and immigration. Here, as well as constructing an account of what happened to these immigrants and to the doctors and biomedical researchers engaged in their study and care, I am looking for answers to broader questions. In particular, I’m assessing the impact of two very different medical systems – one national and public, the other highly fragmented and private -- on responses to newcomers, their medical needs, and their vital labour in healthcare provision.
- 'Imagining Acupuncture: Images and the Early Westernisation of Asian Medical Expertise', Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, 7.2 (Jan 2014), 298-318. post-print PDF, courtesy Brill: 'Imagining Acupuncture'.
- 'Ideology and Disease Identity: The Politics of Rickets, 1929-1982', Medical Humanities, 39.2 (Dec 2013).
- 'Immigration, ethnicity and ‘public’ health policy in postcolonial Britain', in Catherine Cox and Hilary Marland, eds, Migration, Health and Illness in the Modern World (London: Palgrave, 2013) 126-150.
- 'Coming "Home" to (post)Colonial Medicine: Tropical Bodies in Post-War Britain', Social History of Medicine 2012; doi: 10.1093/shm/hks058.
- 'Histories of Heterodoxy', in Mark Jackson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 576-597.
- ‘"The people have no more love left for the Commonwealth”: Media, Migration and Identity in the 1961-2 British Smallpox Outbreak’, Immigrants and Minorities, 25 (November 2008) 3: 263-289.
- ‘Hybrid Vigour? Genes, Genomics, and History’, Genomics, Society and Policy 14 (2008) 1: 12-22.
- '"The English Disease" or "Asian Rickets": Medical Responses to Post-Colonial Immigration', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 81.3 (Autumn, 2007), 533-568.
- ‘Images and the Westward Transmission of Asian Medical Expertise’, in Xingxiang Zhongyi [A History of Chinese Medical Illustration] (Renmin Weisheng, 2007).
- 'Acupuncture and innovation: ‘New Age’ medicine in the NHS', in Jennifer Stanton (ed.), Innovations in Health and Medicine (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002) , 84-10.
- with Helen Valier, 'Organization, ethnicity and the British National Health Service', in Jennifer Stanton (ed.), Innovations in Health and Medicine (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002), 37-64.
- HI31L Medicine in America: Comparative Perspectives (final-year Advanced Option).
- Director, Centre for the History of Medicine (2012-2015).
- MA in the History of Medicine Course Director (2012-2015).
- External Examiner, MA in History of Medicine at University of Exeter (2014-).
- Convenor for the IDEA Collaboration (2009-).
- Admissions Tutor (2008-2011).