Dr Beatriz Pichel (she/her) is the Principal Investigator of the project and Associate Professor at the Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University. She works at the intersection of photographic history, the history of medicine, medical humanities and the history of emotions. She has previously received funding from the Wellcome Trust and the British Academy for her work on medical photography. Her book Picturing the Western Front (MUP, 2021) examined how photographic practices shaped war experiences during the First World War in France. She is the co-editor of the collective volume Emotional Bodies. The Historical Performativity of Emotions (University of Illinois Press, 2019). Her current project examines the emergence of medical photography across medical institutions and specialisms, focusing on how doctors, photographers, patients and other stakeholders used photography, and putting ethical questions at the centre of the historical analysis.
Dr Katherine Rawling (she/her) is the Co-Investigator of the project and Lecturer in Nineteenth-century British History at the University of Leeds and a former Wellcome Trust ISSF Fellow in the Medical Humanities. She specialises in the history of medical photography, particularly in psychiatric institutions of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. She has published with Social History of Medicine and Medical Humanities. Her first book, Photography in English Asylums, c.1880-1914: The Institutional Eye is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan. She has taught Modern British Social and Cultural History and the History of Medicine at the Universities of Leeds, Warwick, Greenwich and Royal Holloway, University of London
Angela Saward (she/her), Research Development Lead at the Wellcome Collection. I have been working with audiovisual archives for many years, researching, licensing, and managing the curatorial life cycle of audio, film, and video. I am in the Curatorial and Public Practice Group at Wellcome Collection, London, working with Wellcome’s unique and distinctive collections across many formats, supporting colleagues and cross-cultural partners but with a special emphasis on film and sound. I serve on the Steering Group for London’s Screen Archives and I’m an active member of FOCAL and AMIA. I am studying for a PhD in Media on medical filmmaking as a ‘hidden cinema’ and I have a business master’s in media technology (MA MTA) and a first degree in English literature.
Dr Andreas Pantazatos is University Assistant Professor and Director of the MPhil in Heritage Studies at the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and partner at the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre. His research focuses on the epistemic and ethical dilemmas that emerge from the entanglement between tangible and intangible heritage. His main research interests include the ethics of care and stewardship, participant perspective epistemic injustice and heritage and the emergence of difficult heritage perceptions through different mediums.
Dr Chimwemwe Phiri is a visual anthropologist with a focus on the intersection of visual culture, archival practices, and the history of medicine. She completed her PhD in medical anthropology and visual history at Durham University, where her thesis explored both historical and contemporary interpretations of colonial-era medical photographic collections related to Malawi and Sudan. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Humanitarian Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester where she will build on her previous research on patient-centred approaches to examine the historical context of humanitarian medicine in Malawi.
Dr Jason Bate is a Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, in the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre. He is currently working on a book length project which examines aspects of amateur photographic societies within metropolitan teaching hospitals between 1870 and 1914, focusing in particular on the emergence of new photographic practices and medical aesthetics, the impulse to communicate, and the nature and significance of the unfolding work of photography in medicine. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, and is a regular writer on photographic history. He has published in titles including Visual Culture of Britain; History and Technology; Social History of Medicine; and Science Museum Group Journal, and most recently a book exploring the ethical ramifications of bringing medical and family photographic archives together, Photography in the Great War: The Ethics of Emerging Medical Collections from the Great War (2022).
Liz Orton is a visual artist using archival material, text, images and performance to explore the tensions between personal and scientific forms of knowledge. Before being diagnosed with Long Covid Liz was a Lecturer in Photography at London College of Communication, and Associate Artist with Performing Medicine. She is the recipient of several awards including the Mead Fellowship, a UCL Challenge Award and a Wellcome Trust Arts award.
Dr Maria Berghs is an anthropologist with a PhD in sociology and social policy. She works in the field of medical anthropology and sociology, specialising in disability studies and chronic illness. Her research interests include disability, chronic illness, global health (sickle cell and thalassaemia), humanitarianism and ethics. She has worked with museums in Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom. The results of her PhD resulted in an exhibition at the Bradford Peace Museum about children’s roles in conflict and peace. She is currently working on a grant application about the impact of reparations for the second-generation in Sierra Leone involving work on digital archives (photographs and testimony) and possible creation of online museum space by communities.
Dr Michaela Clark is a Research Associate at the Department of the History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, Heinrich-Heine University (DE) as well as an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester (UK). Her doctoral thesis takes a Material Culture Studies approach to address the history and politics of medical representation as this pertains to clinical photography in twentieth-century Cape Town (ZA). Drawing on a variety of knowledge fields, this work traces institutional histories, technological developments, socio-political shifts, professional personas, and the networked nature of visual media in the settler-colonial Cape. During her academic career she has attended workshops, summer schools, and conferences in South Africa, the UK, the USA, Switzerland, Belgium, India, the Netherlands, and Sweden spanning the research fields of HSTM, art history, design, museums, the health sciences, history of photography, architecture, cultural studies, and archives. She is a long-standing collaborator with the University of Cape Town’s Pathology Learning Centre and she currently serves as a member of the advisory board of the Cape Medical Museum in Cape Town.
Prof Paul Lowe (Arts University London)
Dr Rebecca Winter (University of Amsterdam)
Anca-Maria Pop is a researcher and editor based in London. She holds an MA in Social and Cultural Studies (University College London) and an MA in Philosophy (University of Warwick). She is currently a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, working on a thesis on French Philosophy of Medicine and Life Sciences in the 20th century, with the generous support of a Techne AHRC scholarship. In her research, Anca has produced work at the crossroads of continental philosophy of life sciences, philosophy of technology, political philosophy, cinema and performing arts. She also co-founded and is chief editor of the In Vivo Arts platform – a multi-lingual and cross-disciplinary publishing space dedicated to research in the visual and performing arts. Anca is presently a PhD Placement student in the Photography Department of the V&A Museum, where she is conducting archival research into the RPS Medical Group collection, under the direction of Martin Barnes.
Julian Pooley is Public Services and Engagement Manager of Surrey History Centre in Woking. Throughout the 1990s he rescued many of the records of Surrey’s former psychiatric and learning disability hospitals that were closing as part of the move away from institutional care. He now works with family and social historians and a range of community groups to enable them to access and use these very personal records for a wide range of family and social history research but also to inspire imaginative engagement projects. He is Honorary Visiting Fellow of the School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester.
Rowena Clayton: UG degree in genetics and worked for the MRC. Moved into occupational health and safety and became a lecturer at Aston University. PG degree in public health. Worked with NHS health authorities, Dept of Health and then Public Health England as a Consultant in Public Health. Oversaw NHS West Midlands Screening Services development and QA. Became Deputy Regional Director (workforce) for PHE Midlands and East in 2015 until part retirement in 2017. Chaired antenatal and newborn (ANNB) QA visits for PHE screening services from 2015 until 2019. Worked part time for PHE on a project related to ANNB screening laboratory QA arrangements from 2017 to 2019. Retired fully in 2019. In retirement involved with an archiving project for BSSRS materials from the 1970s/80s, now donated to Wellcome collection. Now planning to develop a website covering aspects of factory inspection in the late nineteenth century.
Katy Mair (she/her), Collections Information Lead, Cataloguing (Wellcome Collection). My role oversees the cataloguing taking place across the range of material held at Wellcome Collections, and more recently my focus has moved to developing opportunities to incorporate lived experience perspectives into our catalogue. In both my current and my previous role at the National Archives I have collaborated with AHRC and EU-funded research projects and supervised collaborative doctoral placements, and I am by background an early modernist with a PhD in early modern women’s letters – and still make use of my palaeography skills as part of our regular recipe book transcription group.
Orla O’Donnell (she/her), Head, Research & Enquiry. I have an academic background in Modern and Contemporary History and Heritage Studies and started my career working in engagement and education roles. I head up the Research and Enquiry team, which develops, supports, and champions an innovative and creative research environment across our practice and collections. Having previously held the post of Access Lead in Wellcome Collection, I’m passionate about access and inclusion. I have also advocated for a greater focus on Access, Diversity, and inclusion in Wellcome as a founding member of the Disability Interested Group
Ginny Dawe-Woodings studied history at undergraduate focusing on modern Europe and cultural heritage. She then proceeded to undertake a masters in archives and records management before working in a variety of medical archives, including Royal College of Surgeons, St George’s Hospital, Manchester University and Barts Health Archives. At BHA Ginny and the team are responsible for collections spanning from 1137 to the present day, and includes records relating to staff, patients, buildings and management of the hospitals in the current Barts Health group, as well as numerous other hospitals, institutions, charities, organisations and individuals relating to the history of health care and training in the City and East London