Professor of History, University of Warwick 

Hilary Marland is Professor of History at the University of Warwick and Founder Director of Warwick’s Centre for the History of Medicine. Her research and publications focus largely on the history of psychiatry, maternity care, migration and mental health, and medicine in prisons. Between 2014 and 2021 she was co-Principal Investigator on a Wellcome Trust funded project, ‘Prisoners, Medical Care and Entitlement to Health in England and Ireland, 1850 2000’. In 2022 her co-authored book with Professor Catherine Cox, Disorder Contained: Mental Breakdown and the Modern Prison in England and Ireland, 1840-1900 was published by Cambridge University Press. Work on this project also resulted in several public engagement and arts projects in prisons, largely in collaboration with theatre companies, including the production of a new theatre piece ‘Disorder Contained’ with Talking Birds, exploring the history of solitary confinement; several residencies with Rideout at HMP Hewell and HMP Stafford focusing on the history of food, hard labour and ‘weak-mindedness’ in prison; a theatre of testimony production on mothers in prison with Geese Theatre and the women of HMP Peterborough; a series of audio pieces created in response to the archival histories of incarcerated women with Fuel Theatre; and a residency at Tate Modern (Tate Exchange) showcasing our projects. Hilary is currently working on a book on postnatal mental illness in twentieth-century Britain.

https://histprisonhealth.com/about/