What can early twentieth-century debates about renewables tell us about energy policy today? Tobias Silseth argues that a focus on 'efficiency' and 'acceleration' has often led to an expansion of fossil-fuel use.
What did seventeenth century communities do when one of their number reported experiencing suicidal thoughts? Imogen Knox discusses the ways in which early modern people sought to help and care for their family members and neighbours in…
How did US women have abortions when it was illegal? Rosa Campbell explores an archive of US women's testimonies of abortions across borders, in Japan, Puerto Rico and Mexico, with resonances for today.
In the US, abortion rights are under threat. But, as Kelly O'Donnell and Lauren MacIvor Thompson explore, if Roe is lost, we must go back to the beginning, turning to history and what it can reveal about potential paths forward.
This World AIDS Day, Clifford McManus discusses the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt as a radical object of protest and activism, and a symbol of love and remembrance.
The authors of new Researcher Wellbeing Guidelines examine barriers faced by history researchers, ways to mitigate risks, and the value of collaborating with mental health professionals
What can the medieval face mask tell us about the role that medical face coverings play, not only in prevention of illness, but also as a signifier of identities and anxieties? Sadegh Attari explores how medical, cultural, and religious…
In the early years of the National Health Service, the medical romance novels published by Mills & Boon became a unlikely voice for progressive change in the provision of health care and the professional advancement of women. Agnes…
To what extent can today's diagnoses of postpartum psychosis illuminate past women's experiences of childbirth and "madness"? Philippa Carter explores that question in this companion piece to her article in History Workshop Journal 91.
Smallpox was the first contagious disease for which a vaccine was invented. As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, Sanne Muurling, Tim Riswick and Katalin Buzasi ask how social inequalities shaped the last smallpox epidemic in…
What does the vaginal speculum have to do with power? How does the history of this instrument help us to understand how bodies have been understood, policed, and governed? Can this object be reclaimed?
Lisa Godson explores.
The NHS has long relied on immigrant personnel, and restrictions to migration have an impact on its staffing. In the third piece for the Moving People feature, Anna Caceres writes about the fallacy of the 'good' migrant narrative.
A look at the lives of early women physicians in India reveals the impact of social reform in on health outcomes. Dr. Krishnabai Kelavkar, who transformed maternal and infant health in the state of Kolhapur, is such a trailblazing woman, as…
Writing the history of IVF means linking the intimate experiences of conception, gestation, and parturition with global and transnational processes. Vera Mackie, Sarah Ferber, and Nicola J. Marks explore.
Despite emancipationist rhetoric, asylum abolition was a cost-cutting exercise that has left us with a coercive and carceral system of care. Barbara Taylor on the new edition of Peter Barham's 'Closing the Asylum'.
'I have felt a chill of recognition'. Matt Cook interrogates the emotional resonances invoked by Channel 4’s TV drama serial 'It’s A Sin' and what this means for the recognition of memories of grief in suspension.
This opening article in the 'Whose Streets?' feature considers what it means to live through the jarring collapse of public life in the midst of a pandemic and how this moment might stimulate new radical histories of the urban commons.
What does it mean to write a history of the lived experience of injustice and suffering in Trump's America? Jane Caplan examines a life caught in the interstices of Trump's Covid-19 strategy and his attacks on healthcare and public…
When it comes to IVF politics, have the British been too quick to paint Americans as occupying the anti-scientific fringe? Laura Beers responds after the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court.
How can racialised and Islamophobic terms in common currency in Sri Lanka today be traced back to British colonial rule in the late nineteenth century? Shamara Wettimuny explores the formation of racialised colonial identities and legacies…
The Black Report, a landmark critique of health inequalities that barely discussed ‘race’, turns forty today. Grace Redhead and Jesse Olszynko-Gryn investigate the legacy of the report for the age of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter.
