Current Project (2024-2027)

McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Melbourne

"The Origins of Obstetric Violence in British Medicine, 1690–1890"

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This new project aims to undertake an historical investigation into the origins of what we now understand to be obstetric violence. It explores how concerns about harm, violation and violence emerged in British medicine and culture, from the emergence of men practising midwifery in the 1690s, to the formalisation of
obstetrics with the merging of the British Obstetrical and Gynaecology Societies in the late 1890s. The project hopes to understand the extents to which obstetrics was understood and experienced as
violent or violating by British medical practitioners, women, and laypeople. 

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PhD Thesis (2018- 2022)

University of Queensland

"Uncertain knowledge: false conceptions and molas in European medicine, 1500–1800"

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My doctoral thesis explores the history of "false conceptions" in society and medicine in Europe from the late 1500s to 1800s. False conceptions were a type of pregnancy which produced formless lumps of flesh instead of infants. In the age before ultrasound technologies, women and their families experienced these false conceptions as a form of pregnancy loss--most women believed they were pregnant, only to discover they carried one of these lumps of flesh. These pregnancies were widely known about in medicine, and also in broader society, even becoming the stuff of poems and plays. False conceptions have largely disappeared from our modern knowledge of pregnancy and reproduction, and my research seeks to answer why. 

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Research spotlight

• My research was awarded the University of Queensland's inaugural 'Berlin Residency Award': see more about this award here

• Using this award, I spent 3 months at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science: see more on this here

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Other Research

• History of the human afterbirth and placenta​

• History of pregnancy loss and miscarriage​​

• History of sexuality 

  • Women's solitary sexuality, ie masturbation​

  • Pregnancy and sexuality

  • Sexual sciences and medicine​​

• History of science, medicine and anatomy

  • focus on reproductive and life sciences​

• History of sexual violence, contemporary sexual violence laws​​

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For a list of publications, please see the "Publications" page.