Delighted to be contributing to the brilliant work of the University of Hertfordshire Heritage Hub. #PublicHistory www.linkedin.com/posts/univer...

Meet the Research Assistant 📖 Dr Helen Esfandiary is a Research Assistant on the AHRC-IAA funded Victorian Travellers project, led by Dr William Bainbridge and North Herts Museum. Helen is a… | Uni...

Meet the Research Assistant 📖 Dr Helen Esfandiary is a Research Assistant on the AHRC-IAA funded Victorian Travellers project, led by Dr William Bainbridge and North Herts Museum. Helen is a histor...

linkedin.com

As it's Rembrandt's day, here once again is quite possibly the most adorable drawing of a tiny child learning to walk that you will ever see. www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

New article has just been published OA @womenshistoryrev.bsky.social ! Lots of archival work in here tracing the the women who ran “Indian houses” in #17thc London. Including one woman who may have helped plot the Glorious Revolution!! #earlymodern www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

1) We welcome book proposals to this new series with DeGruyter / Brill - Genders and Sexualities in the Early Modern World Series Editors: Elizabeth Rhodes, James Daybell & Merry Wiesner-Hanks brill.com/page/forthco... Image: Vrolijk gezelschap in de buitenlucht, 1658, by Gesina ter Borch

My new book, Why We Need the History of Health and Medicine, will be out later this year - have a look! www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Need-His...

After a little break from writing, my brand new article about the discomforts and embodied experience of travelling by carriage in the 18th century is now available open access on the Social History of Medicine website: @uniofexeternews.bsky.social academic.oup.com/shm/advance-...

Jolted, Stewed, and Jumbled: Motion, Discomfort, and the Body in English Coach Travel, c. 1660–1820

Abstract. This article explores the embodied experience of coach travel in England, c. 1660–1820, focusing on motion, discomfort, and sensory engagement. U

academic.oup.com

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman to obtain a formal medical education in Britain, was born on this day in 1836. Through the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH), you can research Anderson and other incredible female pioneers in the history of medicine.

Final week to register for #SSHM2026! Registration Closes 15 June The Society’s biennial conference takes place 30 June - 3 July at University of Leeds The theme is In/Out

SSHM 2026: In/Out University of Leeds 30 June – 3 July 2026

Conference Co-Convenors: Dr Alexia Moncrieff & Dr Katherine Rawling and Conference Committee: Dr Alex Bamji, Professor Shane Doyle, Megan Graham, Professor Robert Hornsby, Dr Will Jackson, Dr J…

sshm.org

Congratulations to Maria Pia Donato, Elaine Leong, Tillmann Taape and their contributors! Learning to Cut (the first title in a major new history of science series) published yesterday! #OpenAccess as always: uclpress.co.uk/book/learnin...

Learning to Cut

Across early modern Europe, surgeons played a key role in the provision of everyday healthcare. They dressed wounds, lanced boils, set bones, treated tumours, as well as performing specialist operatio...

uclpress.co.uk

One week today: publication day for uclpress.co.uk/book/the-kin...! My brilliant co-authors Rachel Rich, @sarahfoxhistory.bsky.social @adamcrymble.bsky.social & I are excited for the book to be out. It will also be available open access, as our dataset is: zenodo.org/records/8070... #HistFood

The King’s Dinner

The King’s Dinner is about what it meant to be British at the end of the eighteenth century. Drawing on the vast kitchen ledgers of two royal households made newly available to research through digiti...

uclpress.co.uk

Delighted to be delivering a paper at the @long18thsem.bsky.social next Wednesday. I'll be speaking about racemaking, citizenship, and London's Black presence through the case of John Satia and the 1731 ban on Black apprenticeship. Come along if you can! www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

John Satia and the 1731 ban on Black apprenticeship

British History in the Long 18th Century Seminar

history.ac.uk

Petition to save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire: c.org/9JLppW5tMS

Sign the Petition

Save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire

c.org

On Wed 13 May 17:30-19:00 we are delighted to host @naomipullin.bsky.social, who will present her paper ‘The Pleasures and Perils of Aloneness: A social history of solitude in Britain in the long eighteenth century’ based on her current research Register below! 👇 www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

The Pleasures and Perils of Aloneness: A social history of solitude in Britain in the long eighteenth century

British History in the Long 18th Century Seminar

history.ac.uk

Thank you Margot! This is a fine summary of our impactful Humanities research at the University of Hertfordshire.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 4mo ago

In light of closures of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences courses and departments across the UK in the past 2 years, what does that commitment mean? The University of Hertfordshire's announced closures of Humanities offer a case study for hard-edged reflection. 2/9 @victoria-collins.bsky.social

You can now read mine and @sarahfoxhistory.bsky.social new article about the remedies 18thc women took six weeks before birth. doi.org/10.1017/S001...

Join us live at the IHR and online. Free registration. More info and book here: tinyurl.com/29nn4z33 @ihr.bsky.social @carmenmangion.bsky.social @clairelanghamer.bsky.social @dralanagharris.bsky.social @lauragowing.bsky.social @womenshistnet.bsky.social @womenshistoryrev.bsky.social

“The ‘quotidian’ care of infants and pregnant bodies can give us insight into unexpected history […] even if we prefer to leave the suckling and wailing of pregnancy and birth far from our founding documents.” nursingclio.org/2026/02/11/w...

‘Words are but the shell:’ Can Plants Help Us, Historically? The Plant, the Nation, and the Infant

Anglo-American colonist Elizabeth Hanson’s infant inexplicably survived captivity with her mother in 1725 amongst the Abenaki. Abenaki men thought the infant was demonic; the French thought it was …

nursingclio.org

Next week Wednesday 11 February we are delighted to have @pbhellawell.bsky.social & @libertypaterson.bsky.social present their paper titled 'The Ship Bedford: Atlantic and Archival Crossings in the Long Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade'. Join us either in person at the IHR or online from 17:30

Now at #bsecs2025, I'm doing a panel on "Small bodies" with @dralun.bsky.social and @helenesfandiary.bsky.social I'm talking about "Small shoes: footwear, material culture and the Georgian body"

Thanks Lisa! A really productive session and fantastic questions all round!

Lisa Smith@historybeagle.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Top notch panel on Small Bodies: Medicine, Clothing and Travel #BSECS2026, with @helenesfandiary.bsky.social @historymatt.bsky.social and @dralun.bsky.social (chair @sarahfoxhistory.bsky.social). Helen: maternal interventions in ensuring quality of children's health care (at odds with drs). +

Join me online at 10am GMT this Friday for my talk: 'Straightening Childhood: The Le Vacher Machine and Maternal Regulation of the Body in Georgian England.' I’ll be exploring how mothers read, managed & reshaped children’s bodies through the corrective device featured below, and others like it 👇

Dr Anna Jamieson@annafranjam.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Less than a month to go until our free online workshop *Object Stories in Health and Medicine, 1700-1900*. Friday 5 December from 10am GMT. Tickets available through this link!  www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/objec...

Thanks to @long18thsem.bsky.social and @ihr.bsky.social for hosting my talk on the convergence of medical and maternal approaches to childcare in Georgian England. A vibrant forum with a really engaged audience. Pleased the recording is now live for anyone interested.

Tim Hitchcock@timhitchcock.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Really pleased to see that Helen Esfandiary's excellent talk last week to @long18thsem.bsky.social is now available on the @ihrlibrary.bsky.social website: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Thank you @timhitchcock.bsky.social Such a stimulating discussion and a really engaged audience - I’m glad the paper resonated!

Tim Hitchcock@timhitchcock.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Helen Esfandiary giving a great paper on elite maternal authority over the care of children in the context of the professional medical market place in the 18th c. @long18thsem.bsky.social @ihrlibrary.bsky.social

Yes! Institutions prescribed, but the nursery decided... I’ll be unpacking how Georgian mothers redefined medical expertise – transforming teething crises & worm remedies into demonstrations of domestic authority. @ihr.bsky.social @bsecs.bsky.social @ihrwomen.bsky.social @sshmedicine.bsky.social

IHR British History in the Long C18th Seminar@long18thsem.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Join us next Wednesday 19 Nov from 5:30pm either online or in Room 828 of the Institute of Education to hear @helenesfandiary.bsky.social present her paper on ‘The convergence of medical and maternal approaches to domestic childcare in Georgian England’ www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

I’ll be speaking about the very object featured below - the Le Vacher machine - and how mothers in Georgian England used devices like it to 'straighten' children’s bodies. #HistMed #MaterialCulture #MedicalHumanities #18thCentury

Dr Anna Jamieson@annafranjam.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Less than a month to go until our free online workshop *Object Stories in Health and Medicine, 1700-1900*. Friday 5 December from 10am GMT. Tickets available through this link!  www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/objec...

The Weekly Read is "Archival Irruptions" by @ktgerbs.bsky.social, which traces how British colonial authorities in mid-eighteenth-century Jamaica came to criminalize Obeah, a religious practice held by enslaved Africans. Read the entire book now, for free! buff.ly/rccy0qL

The Institute of Historical Research's 2026 June summer school in Bloomsbury is on Sickness and Health, from London's medieval history to the present. Suitable for the History-curious over the age of 16.

IHR London Summer School 2026: Sickness and Health

From the Black Death to the Covid-19 pandemic, from medieval medicine to public health across the centuries, from hospitals to archives & collections. Join us to discover Londo...

history.ac.uk

@ihrlifecycles.bsky.social strikes again with another rising star! Huge congrats to @berrypillot.bsky.social for winning the 2025 @ihr.bsky.social Pollard Prize for: 'No Place to be a Child? The Persistence and Peculiarities of Children’s Play during the Second World War in London and Liverpool.'🏆🙌🎉

New post today on #FindTheMidwife. Midwives under pressure with @sallypezaro.bsky.social and myself! What happened when midwives were pushed by town fathers to interrogate their clients? How did they balance their obligations? www.findthemidwife.com/midwives-und...

The 2026 SSHM Conference will be @universityofleeds.bsky.social. The theme will be In/Out and we are inviting papers that consider experiences of being in and/or out of health or health care in any period or geographical location. #HistMed #HistSTM sshm.org/sshm-2026/

SSHM 2026: In/Out

Location: University of Leeds Dates: 30 June to 3 July 2026 Submission Deadline: 5.00pm (GMT) 11th January 2026 Conference Co-Convenors: Dr Alexia Moncrieff & Dr Katherine Rawling Conference Co…

sshm.org