Dr Jennifer Crane
Office: Phone: Email: |
H448a, fourth floor of the Humanities Building Extension 024 76573938, internal extension 73938 J.Crane.1@warwick.ac.uk |
I am a social and cultural historian of medicine interested in activism and voluntary action, social policy construction, health, expertise, experience, and childhood in modern Britain
I am passionate about engaged research, and co-lead the public engagement for the major Wellcome Trust project, the People's History of the NHS. This has involved organising events and exhibitions with hospitals, museums, retirement homes, patient groups, and campaigners, looking to understand public feelings towards, and attitudes about, the NHS over time. I maintain our public-facing project website, and organised an 'NHS Editathon' with the Wikimedian-in-Residence at the Wellcome Trust, Dr Alice White, in November 2016. I have spoken about the NHS project in popular press, and on BBC Radio Sheffield and the popular television programme, Sunday Brunch.
I have significant teaching experience at the University of Warwick. I am currently a convenor of the third-year undergraduate module, the Cultural History of the NHS, and provide seminar teaching and lectures on a range of modules about history of medicine, modern British history, and historical methods (including, this year, Mind, Body and Society and Historians' Toolkit and, previously, Matters of Life and Death, Britain in the Twentieth Century: Narrating the Nation, and Britain in the 1970s: Between No Society and New Society.
Employment
- 2016-March 2019: Public Engagement Research Fellow on Wellcome Trust project, 'The Cultural History of the NHS', University of Warwick
- Autumn-Winter 2015: Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, London
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2013-2014: Community interviewer for the oral history project 'Voices of the University: Memories of Warwick 1965-2015'.
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2013-2014: Assistant Research Volunteer for plays, 'Trade in Lunacy' and 'A Malady of Migration', University of Warwick.
Education
- 2012-2015: PhD in History, University of Warwick
- Spring 2015: Warwick Transatlantic Fellow at Yale University
- 2011-2012: MA in History (Distinction), University of Warwick
- 2008-2011: BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (First Class), University of Oxford
Publications
Monograph
- Child Protection in England: Expertise, Experience, and Emotion (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
Journal Articles
- '‘Save our NHS’: activism, information-based expertise and the ‘new times’ of the 1980s', Contemporary British History, Advance Access online 25 September 2018.
- 'Why the History of Public Consultation Matters for Contemporary Health Reform', Endeavour 42 (1) (2018), pp. 9-16.
- 'Painful Times: The Emergence and Campaigning of Parents Against Injustice in 1980s and 1990s Britain', Twentieth Century British History 26 (3) (2015), pp. 450-476.
- ''The bones tell a story the child is too young or too frightened to tell': The Battered Child Syndrome in Post-war Britain and America', Social History of Medicine 28 (4) (2015), pp. 767-788.
Book Reviews
- Review of 'The History of Emotions by Rob Boddice', Social History of Medicine, 23 August 2018.
- 'Review of The Changing Faces of Childhood Cancer: Clinical and Cultural Visions since 1940 by Emm Barnes Johnstone with Joanna Baines', Medical History, 60 (3) (2016), pp. 424-5.
- 'Review of The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers by Joanna Bourke', Reviews in History, 25 September 2014.
Policy Pieces
- 'Whose needs? Histories of “need” in the National Health Service', BMJ Opinion, June 2018.
- 'The NHS at 70: Its greatest achievements and the power of individual stories', BMJ Opinion, April 2018.
- Roberta Bivins and Jennifer Crane, 'What is the N in the NHS?', Devo-Then, Devo-Now: What Can the History of the NHS Tell Us About Localism and Devolution in Health and Care? (London: Institute for Public Policy Research, August 2017).
- Eve Colpus and Jennifer Crane, Making Child Protection 'Child Centred' (Southampton: Public Policy @ Southampton, 2016).
- 'Electronic Health Records' (London: Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, 2016).
Newspaper and Magazine Articles
- 'Is Laughter the Best Medicine?', History Today, Volume 66, Issue 11, November 2016.
- Jenny Crane and Margaret Charleroy, 'We can learn a lot from the (often gruesome) history of food in hospitals and prisons', published by The Conversation, Yahoo News, the Metro, and the Independent in June 2017.
- Jennifer Crane and Eve Colpus, 'Are Children Happier than they used to be?', published in the Conversation and the Independent in October 2016.
Methodological Piece
- Jen Grove, Sanja Djerasimovic, and Jenny Crane, 'The Hybrid Academic', Working Knowledge: People and Roles, 2018.
Selected Blogs
- 'Buggy Armies', People's History of the NHS Website.
- 'What Would A Museum of the NHS Look Like?', People's History of the NHS Website.
- 'Petitions and the NHS', People's History of the NHS Website.
- 'X-Rays in Culture: From Courting Skeletons to X-Ray Eyes', People's History of the NHS Website.
- 'Visit to St Fagans Museum', People's History of the NHS Website.
Awards
I have received a doctoral studentship, two small grants, and Parliamentary Fellowship funding from the Wellcome Trust. Within the University of Warwick, I have successfully bid for funding from Warwick Food Global Research Priority Group, the Humanities Research Centre, the History Department, the Centre for the History of Medicine, and the Research Student Skills Programme.
Academic Responsibilities
- 2018-present: Co-convenor, Centre for the History of Medicine Seminar Series, University of Warwick.
- 2016-present: Co-convenor, History & Policy Forum on Parenting.
- 2016-present: Presenter at skills sessions for Centre for the History of Medicine students, University of Warwick, primarily around public and policy engagement work.
- 2014-2015: Co-ordinator for Warwick History Department Open Days.
- 2013-2014: Co-organiser of Monash University-University of Warwick Webinar Series on Social Sciences, Humanities, and Medicine.
- 2012-2013: Peer-to-Peer Postgraduate Support Mentor for MA students, University of Warwick.
- 2012- 2013 Co-organiser of Warwick's History of Medicine Reading Lunch.