Medical Humanities Research Centre (MHRC)

Text-based methodologies

The MHRC is a leading UK site for the study of the textual medical humanities. Our founding directors, Dr David Shuttleton (Reader in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Medical Culture, now retired) and Dr Gavin Miller (Reader in Contemporary Literature and Medical Humanities), established the centre in 2011 from within the School of Critical Studies. Shuttleton’s major AHRC-funded project ‘The Consultation Letters of Dr William Cullen (1710-1790) at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh’ and Miller’s work on Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities, funded by the Wellcome Trust, were important early successes in this area, and Miller has subsequently, with Dr Anna McFarlane (James Murray Beattie Lecturer in Fantasy Literature) and Dr Donna McCormack, published The Edinburgh Companion to Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities (2025). Our current directors, Dr Megan Coyer (Senior Lecturer in English Literature) and Dr Manon Mathias (Reader in French) both employ text-based methods in their research.

Several members of the MHRC have completed or are working on text-based projects relating to the long nineteenth century. Coyer initially joined the centre as a Wellcome Trust-funded postdoctoral research fellow via her project, ‘The Medical Blackwoodians and Medico-literary Synergy in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press’ (2011–2015), and she is currently developing a project entitled, ‘Imagining Scottish Medicine: The Literary Doctor in Victorian Scotland’. She and Miller mentored Dr Douglas Small, who held a Wellcome Trust-funded research fellowship for his project, ‘Cocaine and Cultural Mythology, c. 1860-1919’ (2016–2019). Dr Mila Daskalova (British Academy Postdoctoral & LKAS Fellow in English Literature) is currently undertaking a three-year project on 'Reading Madness: The Literary Origins of Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry', with Coyer as mentor, and is also in the process of preparing her first monograph for publication, entitled News from the Asylum: The Asylum Periodical in Britain, America and Beyond. Mathias has recently published a monograph, Gut, Brain, and Environment in Nineteenth Century French Literature and Medicine (2024), related to her Royal Society of Edinburgh Network grant on Gut Health. Dr Cheryl McGeachan (Senior Lecturer in Geographical & Earth Sciences) received funding from the Carnegie Trust for her project ‘A Distinctly Scottish Surgeon? Uncovering Police Surgery in 19th Century Scotland’, and you can listen to a podcast about her work here: Body of Work Heritage Podcast: Police Surgeon.

A substantial cluster of our members’ text-based projects engage with reproductive health. McFarlane completed her British Academy-funded postdoctoral project on ‘Products of Conception: Pregnancy in Science Fiction 1968-2015’ in 2023, with Miller as her mentor, and more recently was a Visiting Collaborator on the Wellcome Trust-funded Future of Human Reproduction project at the University of Lancaster. Before joining us at Glasgow, Dr Fabiola Creed (Research Associate in Sociological & Cultural Studies) was a Research Fellow on Professor Hilary Marland’s Wellcome Trust-funded project, ‘The Last Taboo of Motherhood?: Postnatal Mental Disorders in 20th Britain’ (University of Warwick). Dr Kristin Hay (Lecturer in Political & International Studies) has completed archival research for two Wellcome Trust-funded projects on the history of Scottish abortion activism and on family planning in Scotland and has published on these topics. Mathias is currently developing a project entitled, ‘Caesarean Stories’ examining representations of caesarean birth in Anglophone and Francophone literature from the nineteenth century to the present. Julie Clague (Lecturer in Catholic Theology) is Co-chair of a Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities (JLIFLC) learning hub on HIV and Maternal Health and has authored an article on unintended pregnancies and the social determinants of health for the edited book, Reproductive Justice and the Common Good (2024). Her wider work includes her role as a member of oversight committee planning the JLIFLC State of the Evidence report on faith and global health and her contribution as a co-author and peer reviewer for the Lancet special issue on Faith and Health.

Our members also engage with text-based practices in relation to illness narratives, care and disability. Professor Sheila Dickson (Professor of German) has a long-standing interest in narratives of illness and amongst other publications, has edited a scholarly edition of narratives of illness, Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde [Digital Edition]. Dr Malica Willie (Lecturer in Black British and Diasporic Literature) is working on a project entitled, ‘Normalising Stereotypes of Blindness’. Her research aims at intersecting Disability and Slavery Studies, along with Caribbean, Irish and English Literature, to explore the degree to which colonialism has influenced depictions of blindness in 20^th and 21^st Century Caribbean writing. Professor Amy Holdsworth (Professor of Television, Film and Cultural Studies) works on care aesthetics and auto-biography/auto-ethnography, and, for example, was a Co-I on the Wellcome Trust-funded project, ‘Discourses of Care: Care in Media, Medicine and Society’ (PI: Professor Karen Lury).

Another cluster of member projects relate to mental health (some of which have been mentioned already). Miller has completed a range of funded projects on the media and publishing histories of the psy disciplines: ‘Penguins on the Couch: Penguin publishing on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy c.1935-1990 (British Academy Small Grant); ‘David Stafford-Clark (1916-1999): Portrait of a Media Psychiatrist’ (Wellcome Trust Small Grant); Other Psychotherapies – Across Time, Space, and Cultures (Wellcome Trust Small Grant); 'Penguins on the Mind Exhibition' (GKEF Small Award). He is currently working on a ‘Psychiatry in the Media’ RCPsych exhibition. Finally, Dr Alessia Zinnari (Lecturer in Italian) is currently completing a monograph, provisionally entitled, Modern Phoenixes: Mental Illness, Liminality, and Autobiography in Leonora Carrington and Alda Merini.