A Healing Sense of Place: The Importance of Environment on healing in the nineteenth century

Throughout the 19th century healing spaces were constantly adapting and changing due to understandings of illness, popular treatment options and public opinion for example, while many people would consider a hospital nowadays to be a site of healing, the 1832 Anatomy Act left many poorer patients and their families concerned that they would face post…

Medical Professionalism in the 19th Century

Compared to our modern understanding of the human body, the early Victorians understanding of the human body (physiology, pathology, anatomy etc) was limited, not solely amongst the population but also amongst experts. While many medical professionals had a greater understanding of human anatomy than that of the general populace, their understanding of other areas of…

Tips for Accessibility

This is a brief overview of ways to make your text or presentation accessible. It includes font size, colour, spacing etc and ensures that your work can be accessible and read by a wide range of people. These are a good starting point, but the Web Accessibility Content Guidelines (WACG) can offer further guidance. A…

Taking Research Online and Accessibility

For many people involved in research, the change in our everyday lives has changed the way we do our work, with many of us moving our research to more online platforms. While this move has enabled many of us to reach a wider audience than previously, it isn't without challenges such as audio issues, lag…

Harriet Martineau – Radical Activism

Abstract Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was a unique figure in Victorian culture, who contributed to a wide range of intellectual and social debates of the period. She was a writer, sociologist, economist, feminist and disabled activist and abolitionist. As a historical figure she attracts cross-discipline interest for her varied and interesting life. It would be impossible to fit…

Swansea Association of Independent Living Presentation

When I was asked to present, I struggled to decide on what to present. As a PhD student my research has at times become my life, but as a disabled woman my identity has permeated into those studies and influenced them and my ability to engage with the university. Everyday ableism is something we all…

In/Visibility, Invalidism and Identity

This presentation was given on 04/10/2019 at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability in London, as part of a Conference on Disability History and Heritage called, "Opening up the Archives"   When I was asked to present, I wasn’t too sure what to present, while my research is interesting, it still feels like it is in…

The Victorian Era – Introduction (Part 1)

The Victorian era was a time period where Queen Victoria was on the throne of Great Britain (and at this time Ireland) between becoming queen on the 20th June 1837 until her death on the 22nd January 1901, a reign of 63 years and 7 months, which at the time was the longest of any…

Postmodernism, Historicism and Anthropology

Postmodernists use the term historicism (coined by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel) which basically means that any questions or queries about something must be considered within the social context within which the question arises. Much like in anthropology, in which a researcher must be conscious of their own ethnocentrism when exploring another culture, a historian must…

My Proposed Methodology – Postmodernism

My current methodology is rooted in postmodern theory, however this can be confusing to some because the very nature of the word makes people consider it in two parts – post and modern – and suggest that it has a temporal relationship to something, namely modernism. However for Lyotard[1] and other theorists, postmodernism isn’t tied…