About Us
Principal Investigators
Roberta Bivins, Professor of the History of Medicine, University of Warwick
Roberta Bivins (BA Columbia; PhD MIT) is a historian of medicine at the University of Warwick. Her early research examined the cross-cultural transmission of medical expertise, particularly in relation to global and alternative medicine. Since 2004, funded by the Wellcome Trust, she has studied the impacts of immigration and ethnicity on postwar British health, medical research, and practice. Her new research examines the cultural history and influence of the British National Health Service since 1948. Bivins also convenes the trans-sector and trans-disciplinary IDEA Collaboration (www.go.warwick.ac.uk/IDEACollab) for improving the delivery of ethnically aware research, practice, and policies in healthcare.
Mathew Thomson, Professor in History, University of Warwick
Mathew Thomson is a historian of modern British history at the University of Warwick. His early research examined how 'mental deficiency' became a preoccupation for social policy in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. His has examined the history of the influence of psychological thinking in twentieth century Britain and has conducted a study of concerns about child well-being in Britain since the Second World War. This includes consideration of the impact of evacuation and the blitz, the influence of post-war attachment theory, the role of psychology in creating a virtual landscape for child development in television, responses to the dangers of traffic and paedophilia, and the nature of the wartime social settlement in Britain and the challenges it faced by the end of the 1970s. He is now working on a Cultural History of the NHS.
Research Fellows
Jane Hand is a Research Fellow for the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award 'The Cultural History of the NHS', University of Warwick. She completed her PhD in 2015, which analysed the role and function of visual images in wartime and postwar health education in Britain. She is particularly interested in understanding the role of images - both static and moving - in communicating forms of knowledge about the NHS and how these in turn constructed understandings of healthiness and disease prevention in modern Britain.
George Campbell Gosling is a Research Fellow for the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award 'The Cultural History of the NHS', University of Warwick. He was awarded his PhD by Oxford Brookes University in 2011 before holding teaching positions at the Universities of Liverpool and Warwick. His first book, Payment and Philanthropy in British Healthcare, 1918-1948, is due for publication with Pickering and Chatto in 2016. He is particularly interested in the economic life of the NHS and its significance for political and public imagingings of a 'free' health service.
Natalie Linda Jones is a Research Fellow for the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award 'The Cultural History of the NHS', University of Warwick. She was awarded her Phd in 2013 from the University of Birmingham for a study of the jurisprudence and bioethical rhetoric of abortion, and the emergence of an abortion 'trope' in nineteenth-century English Literature. Following her PhD she has taught and researched at the University of Birmingham, as well as undertaking several public engagement and support roles within the cultural sector. Natalie is also a practicing visual artist, and has exhibited work with BBC West Midlands, The REP (Birmingham) and Direct Art Action. She is particularly interested in the rhetoric of the NHS and how this intersects with, and might be informed by, the art and literature of the period.
Jennifer Crane is a Research Fellow for the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award 'The Cultural History of the NHS', University of Warwick. She completed her PhD in 2015, which analysed the role of campaign groups in shaping child protection policy in post-war Britain. Following her PhD, she undertook a three-month Fellowship at the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology, writing a briefing about electronic health records. Her current research examines activism around the NHS, and how various campaign groups have praised, criticised, used and shaped this institution, particularly through visual and material culture.
Jack Saunders is a Research Fellow for the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award 'The Cultural History of the NHS', University of Warwick. He was awarded his PhD, which looked at workplace culture and labour militancy in the British motor industry, at University College London in July 2015. On the project Jack will be looking at how working for the NHS has shaped the cultural values of health workers, particularly their attitudes towards work, efficiency and productivity.
You can find out about our Advisory Board here.