Latest News and reports

Sex and History project nominated for Engage Awards

Professor Kate Fisher and Dr Rebecca Langlands are delighted that their project, Sex and History, has made it through to the public vote in the EngageU Awards.

The European Competition for Best Innovation in University Outreach and Public Engagement aims to highlight engagement practices from universities across Europe and serve as a public repository for best practices in outreach. Kate and Rebecca entered their project, Sex and History, which uses their research expertise in the history of sex and sexual knowledge to work with museums, schools, sex education experts and charities throughout the South West, to change the face of sex education and enhance the role of museum collections in social change.

Entries are now available to view online and members of the public are encouraged to vote for their favourite. The public vote will play a key role in contributing to the selection of the three winning entries by the panel of judges on the 20th April.

To vote for Kate and Rebecca’s project, visit the Engage Awards website.

Professor Jonathan Barry awarded inaugural Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in Medical Humanities

Centre acaemic Professor Jonathan Barry has been awarded a prestigious Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in Medical Humanities. Professor Barry's research, entitled The medical world of early modern England, Wales and Ireland, c.1500-1715 will develop a groundbreaking database with biographies of all medical practitioners active in England, Wales and Ireland c.1500-1715. The database will then be used to produce the first all-round study of the nature and impact of medical practice in early modern Britain and will be published as a major monograph by a leading university press.

The Investigator Awards in Medical Humanities cover medical history and humanities, and ethics and society, enabling scholars to pursue individual, bold visions with greater flexibility. The scheme builds on moves by the Wellcome Trust towards more expansive, longer-term research in the medical humanities.

For more information on the project, contact Professor Barry.

Centre for Medical History academics triumph at Exeter Impact Awards

Dr Kate Fisher and Dr Rebecca Langlands are celebrating after winning an award for 'Outstanding Social and Cultural Impact' as part of the University of Exeter's Impact Awards. The glittering ceremony took place in the Great Hall and was attended by Sir Alan Langlands, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) as the guest of honour and also attended by the Vice Chancellor Professor Sir Steve Smith along with 300 others.

Professor Nick Talbot, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Knowledge Transfer) who hosted the evening commented ‘Our intention in running these Awards was to provide a great opportunity to showcase research which is having an impact, not only for the University community, but more importantly to all the partners who work with us on research projects many of whom attended the awards ceremony. We judged projects based on the quality of the research, their innovation, partnership working, and on their reach, significance and associated wider impact.’

For more information about the winning project, visit the project webpage.

For more infomration about the awards, visit the University News webpage.

Sex and History academics shortlisted for Exeter Impact Awards

Sex and History, a research project by Dr Kate Fisher and Dr Rebecca Langlands is one of 27 research projects shortlisted out of nearly 100 entries for the forthcoming Exeter Impact Awards.

The inaugural Awards celebrate the diverse range of research across the University of Exeter and the benefits that it brings to the world. The awards aim to recognise successes in knowledge exchange, collaborative working and partnership which have taken research from Higher Education and benefitted the wider economy and society.

Talking Sex oack

Sex and History has been shortlisted within the ‘Outstanding Social and Cultural Impact’ category. Dr Fisher and Dr Langlands’ research into past sexual practices is empowering people of all ages to talk more openly and productively about sex. Their research has found that collections of objects from past cultures such as ancient Rome or China are ideal for stimulating discussion about sex: they showcase global cultural diversity, they provide historical distance, and they demonstrate that sex has been a concern for centuries. Activities have included a successful exhibition ‘Revealing Collections’ which received around 20,000 visitors at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro and a well-received sex education resource Talking Sex currently trialling in over 40 schools in Devon and Cornwall.

Winners of each of the seven categories will be announced at a gala dinner on 7th December

For more information about the project, visit the project webpage.

Centre celebrates launch of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine
9th September 2011

Tony Woods, Clare Matterson and Professor Mark Jackson Dr Kate Fisher, Director of the Centre for Medical History, Dr Tony Woods, Head of Medical Humanities, Clare Matterson, Director, Medical Humanities and Engagement at the Wellcome Trust and Professor Mark Jackson, Centre for Medical History.

The Centre for Medical History celebrated the launch of The Oxford Handbook of The History of Medicine, which has been edited by Mark Jackson, Professor of the History of Medicine.

The volume is the first large scale review of the field to be published in over twenty years. The book addresses major themes in the history of medicine, including the histories of childhood and ageing, women and medicine, death, science and medicine, chronic diseases, public health, alternative medicine, medical ethics, and mental illness.

Original articles have been written by 37 leading international scholars offering up-to-date discussion of key themes and issues in the field. Unlike previous books, this handbook also looks at different periods of history around the world, providing a global history of medicine, including Islamic, Chinese, Eastern European, Australasian, and South American medical traditions.

Professor Jackson said: “The history of medicine can raise important questions about medicine as well as history. Historical reflection also opens up new debates about how health is politicised, linking historical analysis closely to current debates about how we look after children and the elderly, for example.”

He added, “Most of the contributors have been supported by the Wellcome Trust, which has been the most generous and

inventive funder of medical history and humanities. Although they demonstrate a keen engagement with historical methods and ideas, the chapters also echo the Trust’s commitment to improving human and animal health through history and the humanities as well as the sciences. In particular, the Handbook aims to expose the cultural, economic and political contexts of medical knowledge and practice in the past and present.”

Contributors to the Handbook include Dr Kate Fisher, Professor Mark Harrison, Dr Staffan Müller-Wille, Dr Edmund Ramsden and Professor Mark Jackson who attended the launch.

Dr Kate Fisher, co-Director of the Centre for Medical History has contributed a chapter about uses of oral history by historians of medicine and its challenges and directions for future research. Dr Fisher said: “In recent decades oral history has become a prominent and important method used by historians of medicine. My chapter draws attention to the key trends in the field and key works of broad interest.”

As a science historian Dr Muller-Wille wrote a chapter about the relationship between the history of science and the history of medicine and regards the publication as an extremely important tool. Dr Muller-Wille said: “Oxford Handbooks are a key resource for researchers, lecturers and students. Writing a chapter for the Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine offers an excellent opportunity for a historian of science to reach a wide audience in a neighbouring discipline. This can result in fruitful collaborations at the intersection of the history of science and medicine.”

To order the book, visit the Oxford University Press website.

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