Professor Hilary Marland reflects on 28 years at Warwick
Professor Hilary MarlandLink opens in a new window, recently retired in September, after serving as one of the longest members of the History Department. She reflects on her 28 years at Warwick.
As I head towards retirement this coming September, it’s a challenge to sum up my 28 years at Warwick. Time has passed very quickly, a reflection of the dynamism of the History Department which has offered me many different opportunities over the years in terms of research and teaching, and supported my setting up and then leadership of the Centre for the History of Medicine (CHM). The CHM has been a key part of my career at Warwick and celebrates its 25th birthday this year.
"I will miss you all, but can look back to a rich and enjoyable career at Warwick over many years. It’s a very special Department and I have really appreciated the opportunities it offered me over the years in terms of teaching and research. I’ve also been fortunate to have had such brilliant colleagues."
As one of the longest-serving members of the Department, I’ve spent a good amount of time in the run up to retirement thinking about my early days at Warwick. I moved from the Netherlands to Warwick to take up a Wellcome Trust lectureship in 1996. This was the era of Cool Britania and New Labour were about to win the 1997 election. We were on the cusp of the first ever Research Assessment Exercise, our exceptional Vice Chancellor Sir Brian Follett had launched the Warwick Research Fellowship Scheme, bringing around twenty early career scholars to the University, and was exploring the prospect of a medical school at Warwick. Central administration still fitted into Senate House on central campus. There was an overwhelmingly positive feeling of can-do!
Initially, my appointment was in the Centre for the Study of Social History and Carolyn Steedman did a wonderful job getting me networked across the faculties. This became something of a tradition and members of the CHM have continued over the years to work with colleagues in Sociology, Theatre Studies, French, English, the Business School and the Warwick Medical School on a variety of projects, something that has been tremendously stimulating and exciting. Working with Colin Jones and Joan Lane, in 1998 we set about establishing the Centre for the History of Medicine and a Masters degree programme, and I became the first Director of the CHM in 1999. Mathew Thomson, Claudia Stein and Roberta Bivins joined us in the decade that followed, as we became one of the largest clusters of historians of medicine in the UK. The Wellcome Trust recognised our heft and ambition, and we bid successfully for two Wellcome Strategic Awards in 2003 and 2008, which gave us the boost to greatly expand our activities.
These were the first of many awards – most funded by the Wellcome Trust – won by CHM colleagues which enabled it to continue to grow and undertake exciting research, in particular collaborative projects. Over the years these have included: health at work, curing with water, the cultural history of the NHS, prison medicine, and most recently postnatal mental illness. Our expertise was recognised in fields as broad as medicine in South Asia, the history of psychiatry and psychology, migration, health and disease, early modern medicine and science, biopower, diabetes prevention, maternal and child health, the history of disability, the medical history of Russia, and medicine in the British Empire, and over the years we were joined in the CHM by David Arnold, David Hardiman, Angela Davis and more recently Elise Smith, Claire Shaw, Sophie Mann and Doreen Kembabazi (I hope I haven’t left anyone out!). Working with a series of amazing administrators, the CHM has also been able to support generations of PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, to host numerous workshops and conferences, and to develop exciting public engagement and impact projects, working with partners in medicine, museums and the arts.
My own career at Warwick has stretched over the terms of nine heads of Department and has seen a massive expansion in the number of women working in the Department, from just a handful in 1996 to almost half of a Department totalling 47 academic staff today. I’ve been fortunate to teach excellent and interesting undergraduates over the years, to supervise over twenty PhDs, and to develop exciting team projects working with outstanding postdocs. And my career at Warwick has taken me places I never expected to go, directing the Institute of Advanced Study in 2009-11 and developing public engagement and impact projects which enabled me to work with talented theatre makers, experience a week’s residency in the Tate Modern and, particularly rewarding, to take our research into prisons and convert it into a series of performances involving music, physical theatre and puppetry with people in prison. Most of all I have had the opportunity to do engaging research involving me in a wonderfully supportive community of scholars at Warwick and beyond. I will certainly be keeping in touch and continuing to work with my colleagues in the CHM beyond retirement!
Professor Roberta Bivins pays tribute to her long-standing career.
“Not only did Hilary publish pioneering research across an array of topics during her time at Warwick, and not only did she bring in oodles of money both for her own work and for numerous PhD students, colleagues, and postdocs, but she was also enormously generous with her time and collegiality at Warwick and beyond. "She demonstrated this in her career-long engagement with professional societies, her frequent presence on advisory boards, and her (again ground-breaking) engagement with diverse arts and heritage groups and members of the public, and as a mentor for historians of medicine near and far, including a significant number of successful PhD students.”