Workshop CfP: Locating Health: Regional Historical Perspectives on Human Care 1800-1948
CALL FOR PAPERS - 1-DAY WORKSHOP, FRIDAY 11 JANUARY 2019
University of Nottingham, Humanities Building, Friday 11 January 2019, 10.00 – 16.00.
LOCATING HEALTH: REGIONAL HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN CARE, 1800-1948
Keynote speaker: Professor Christine Hallett (University of Huddersfield)
This one-day workshop seeks to bring together researchers with an
interest in the history and representations of healthcare, medicine,
nursing, hospitals, and public health in the UK between 1800 and 1948,
with a particular focus on local and regional histories.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, healthcare became
increasingly organised, centralised and professionalised, paving the way
for the reforms of the twentieth century leading to a national
healthcare system. But this process was piecemeal and haphazard, often
dependent on local and even individual initiatives. Hospitals were
funded by local subscriptions; reforms such as the introduction of
professional nurses, district nursing, and improvements to workhouse
infirmaries occurred on a local basis, and spread only gradually.
As a result, the experiences of patients, nurses, doctors and other care
practitioners differed significantly according to geographical
location, as well as by class, wealth, and gender. This workshop seeks
to highlight these local and regional differences and experiences in
order to build up a more textured, nuanced picture of the development of
healthcare in the industrial age.
This workshop is the first of a series to be held arising from the
AHRC-funded project ‘Florence Nightingale Comes Home for 2020’, which
examines the influence of Nightingale’s upbringing in the Midlands on
her work and ideas. This first workshop invites contributions from a
wide range of scholars in order to develop insights into broader
histories of health and care in a regional perspective.
Possible themes for contribution include:
- How can localised studies of historical health and care
contribute to a broader understanding of the state of health and
healthcare in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
- How did standards of, and access to healthcare vary according to
regional differences? How did patient experiences differ by region?
- How was healthcare delivered in the home? How did this differ
from its delivery in institutional environments? Were there significant
overlaps between conceptions of health at home and in institutions?
- How can studies of individual institutions, such as workhouse
infirmaries, hospitals, and nursing homes, contribute to broader
regional and national histories of health?
- How did hospital nursing, district nursing and women’s
involvement in healthcare develop differently in different areas?
- How did connections and divisions between the rural and the urban inform healthcare?
- How did representations of health vary across localities? How
might we better understand these regional cultures of health?
Practical details
- An abstract of no more than 300 words along with a short (1-2 page) CV should be sent to Nightingale2020@nottingham.ac.
- The workshop is fully funded as part of the AHRC Research
Grant-funded project ‘Florence Nightingale Comes Home for 2020: an
historico-literary analysis of her family life’, grant ref AH/R00014X/1.
- There will be no charge for attendance.
- A limited number of travel bursaries are available for travel within the UK