Research Fellow, 'The Last Taboo of Motherhood: Postnatal Mental Disorders in 20th Century Britain' Project, (2021 - 2024).

BIOGRAPHY

I am an Australian-born historian of British medico-legal history, now living and working in the UK.

In December 2019, I graduated with my PhD in History from the University of Western Australia. My thesis, entitled: 'Medicine on Trial: Medical Testimony & Forensic Expertise in the Scottish High Court of Justiciary, c. 1822-1906' examined the professional careers and criminal cases of four leading forensic experts in nineteenth and early-twentieth century Edinburgh. Since early 2020, I have been living and working in Britain. From February 2020 to April 2021 I worked as a Research Assistant in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh. I am currently based in the History Department of the University of Warwick, working as a Research Fellow on the Wellcome funded project 'The Last Taboo of Motherhood? Postnatal Mental Disorders in 20th Century Britain' led by Professor Hilary Marland. I am also writing my first monograph on the history of the police surgeon in Britain - The Victorian Police Surgeon: A History of Crime and Forensic Medicine - to be published by Palgrave.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• History of Crime and Justice
• History of Medicine, Science & Expertise
• History of Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially Scotland
• History of the Media

PUBLICATIONS

• Kelly-Ann Couzens, ‘The Police Surgeon, Medico-Legal Networks and Criminal Investigation in Victorian Scotland', in Alison Adam (ed.), Crime and the Construction of Forensic Objectivity from 1850, Cham, Springer International Publishing, 2020, pp. 125-159.

• -------------, ‘‘Upon my word, I do not see the use of medical evidence here’: Persuasion, Authority and Medical Expertise in the Edinburgh High Court of Justiciary’, History, vol. 104, no. 359, 2019, pp. 42-62.

• -------------, ‘Medical Testimony in the Judicial Sphere’ in Jo Turner, Paul Taylor, Karen Corteen & Sharon Morley (eds), A Companion to Crime & Criminal Justice History, Bristol, Policy Press, 2017, pp.143-144.