After working as a documentary film-maker at the BBC for ten years, I won Wellcome Trust funding to study for an MA in the history of medicine at UCL. I went on to complete a Wellcome Trust-funded PhD at UCL on themes of illness and health in the life and work of the nineteenth-century philosopher and psychologist William James: ‘Re-writing the laws of health: William James on the politics and philosphy of disease in nineteenth-century America.’
I currently work at the Centre for the History of the Emotions, organising academic events, developing our public engagement strategy and facilitating an on-going programme of public engagement activities.
Research
I continue to work on William James alongside my more recent research interest in parenting advice and its links with shifting concepts of psychological health in twentieth-century Britain.
Prizes
– In 2008 I was awarded the ‘Friends of the Wellcome Trust Centre and Library Prize’ for the most outstanding MA dissertation in my year.
– During my doctoral studies I was awarded the ‘2010 Young Scholar Award’ by the International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Science.
Teaching experience
I have taught history, sociology of science and media skills to young and mature students on undergraduate and MA courses at UCL, Birkbeck and Royal Holloway. I have also undertaken media consultancy roles, working with scientists to explain, and engage them in, the processes involved in turning complex academic research into stories and formats suitable for a more general audience.
Public engagement activities
I have extensive project management and communication skills based on my many years of experience engaging with a wide variety of audiences and contributors.
Whilst in television production I made programmes which stretched across the breadth of the main UK channels, with their associated demographic variances. These included several films for BBC2’s flagship Horizon science series, presenter-led formats including What the Tudors did for us and observational medical documentaries, such as Trauma for BBC1 and the Grierson-nominated Who should get the liver?, which examined the ethics of liver transplantation operations in the NHS.
In 2011 I organised an international symposium at UCL ‘Biography and its Place in the History of Psychiatry and Psychology’, one of the aims of which was to bring together academics, publishers and popular factual authors, to discuss how biography as a format may be used as a vehicle to engage non-academic audiences.
I am currently working as a factual content producer on a Wellcome-funded Society Award, entitled ‘Surgeon X’, helping to develop and shape both the scientific and medical humanities aspects of a graphic novel set in a near-future world.
Publications
‘Interpreting “Mind-Cure”: William James and “the Chief Task of the Science of Human Nature’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Spring 2012, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 115-133.
‘When Misery and Metaphysics Collide: William James on ‘the Problem of Evil’’, Medical History, July 2011, Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 389-392.
‘Marcus Aurelius, William James and “the Science of Religions”’, William James Studies, Dec. 2009, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 70-89.
Book reviews
Francesca Bordogna, William James at the Boundaries: Philosophy, Science, and the Geography of Knowledge, History of the Human Sciences, Sep. 2010, Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 121-124.
Lee-Ann Monk, Attending Madness: at work in the Australian colonial asylum, Medical History, Oct. 2010, Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 560-561.