
Professor Keir Waddington
Professor of History, Head of History
School of History, Archaeology and Religion
- waddingtonk@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2087 6103
- 4.40, John Percival Building
- Media commentator
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Overview
Research interests
A specialist in medical and environmental history, my research interests focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain and Western Europe. I have published books and articles on rural environmental history, public health and diseased meat, literature and the Gothic laboratory, medicine and charity, and hospitals and asylums. I am currently working on projects related to: health and pollution regulation in the Victorian and Edwardian rural environment, and on ways of undertaking interdisciplinary research projects.
I am a co-director of the ScienceHumanities initiative - an attempt to think and rethink the relationships and the boundaries between the sciences and the humanities - and editor of Social Histories of Medicine monograph series published by Manchester University Press.
Current research projects
- Health and pollution regulation in the Victorian and Edwardian rural environment
- Drought, water, and the rural environment
- ScienceHumanities
Impact and engagement (since 2015)
- 2018: Panel, Guizhou University Innovative Teaching Programme, Cardiff University
- 2018 ‘Turning Students into Scholars’, Digital Humanities case study for JISC, https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/member-stories-using-digital-archives-to-inspire-students-19-nov-2018
- 2018: ‘Its Alive! Its Alive!’, Frankenfest, Cardiff University
- 2018: The Moonstone, BookTalk, Cardiff University
- 2018: ‘Sedation, Shocks, and the Somatic: Treating mental illness from the 1880s to 1940s’, Talk in support of ‘Drawing Bipolarity’, Exhibition opening, Insole Court Cardiff.
- 2018: ‘Public Health and the Limits of Sanitation in Rural Glamorgan, 1850-1900’ , Merthyr Local History Society
- 2017: ‘Drought, Disease, Dirty Water, and the Local, 1870-1914’, Cardiff Scientific Society
- 2017: ‘Local Communities and Public Health in Victorian and Edwardian Rural Glamorgan’, Gelligaer Historical Society
- 2016: ‘Digital Texts and Teaching Medical History’, Jisc, London
- 2016: ‘Medical Prosthetics: Past, Present and Future’, St Fagans National History Museum
- 2016:2016 ‘Spaces and Places of ScienceHumanities’, ScienceHumanities blog, Sept 2016, https://cardiffsciencehumanities.org/2016/09/27/spaces-and-places-of-sciencehumanities/
- 2015: Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde, BookTalk, Cardiff University
- 2015: ‘Before Nightingale’, Women’s History week, Cardiff University
Biography
Education and qualifications
1992-95 History PhD, University College London/Institute of Historical Research
1991-92 MA History, University College London
1988-91 BA History, University of East Anglia
Career overview
1999 - present School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University
1997-99 Research Fellow, Queen Mary & Westfield College
1995-96 Research Fellow, Wellcome Centre for History of Medicine at UCL
1994-98 Part-time Lecturer, School of History, University of East Anglia
1994-95 RHS Centenary Research Fellow, Institute of Historical Research
Honours and awards
Current awards
- Co-Investigator, Wellcome Trust Small Grant in the Humanities and Social Sciences [with Martin Willis and James Castell, Cardiff]
Previous awards
- Co-investigator, Cardiff University Incoming Visiting Fellow award [with Martin Willis and James Castell, Cardiff]
- Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme, rural mortality 1870-19140
- Co-investigator, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (Cardiff), Internationalization Fund, ScienceHumanities II, [with Martin Willis and James Castell, English, Cardiff]
- Co-investigator, AHRC, ‘Bridging the Gap’ GW4 consortium network [with Bath, Bristol, and Exeter universities) on co-production of research
- Co-investigator, ISSF Wellcome Trust, Medical Humanities Collaborative Award [with Julie Brown, Medical Education, Cardiff]
- Co-investigator. College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (Cardiff), International Visibility Fund, Science Humanities, [with Martin Willis and James Castell, English, Cardiff]
Professional memberships
Editorial Boards
- Editor, Society for the Social History of Medicine's monograph series published by Manchester University Press
- Editorial Board, Social History of Medicine
- Editorial Board, Intersections in Literature and Science monograph series, University of Wales Press
Advisory Boards
- Advisory Board, ‘Building a Healthier City’, Bath Record Office (Wellcome funded project)
- External Academic Advisor, Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences of Health Medicine and Technology, University of Liverpool
- Advisory Board, ‘‘From “A Penny in the Pound” to “Free at the Point of Delivery”, Gwent Archives
- Academic Council, Institute of Historical Research
Networks/Centres (Membership)
- AHSS Digital Humanities network
- GW4 Regional Medical Humanities network
- Coma and Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre (http://cdoc.org.uk/), Cardiff and York universities
Speaking engagements
2018-19
- 'Thinking medically, thinking digitally', Heritage Dot, HLF/Lincoln University
- Plenary, 'A Flat Past?'. Environmental and Medical Perspectives on Modern Francophone Culture Conference, University of Bristol
- '‘Kindly see to the matter’: Local communities, sanitation and modernity in rural Monmouthshire, 1850-1920', Gwent Archives
- Plenary Panel, 'The ScienceHumanities', 3rd International Conference on Science and Literature, Sorbonne University, Paris
- Invited Commentator, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
2017-18
- ‘Drought, Disease, Dirty Water, and the Local, 1870-1914’, Cardiff Scientific Society
- 'The ScienceHumanities Practices', Centre for Environmental Humanities, Bristol
- 'The Everyday and the ScienceHumanities', Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science and Cultural Theory, Duke University
- Invited Participant on a roundtable on interdisciplinarity, Department of English, Duke University
- 'A watery turn', School of History, Swansea University
- '"we are in the midst of a fight’" Authority, Responsibility, and Rural Sanitation, 1870-1914, European Association for the History of Medicine and Health bi-annual conference, Bucharest
2016-17
- 'Drought, disease, and modernity in rural Wales, c. 1880 – 1914', Medicine and Modernity conference, University of Oxford
- '‘think yellow and smells fearfully’: Placing industrial waste, river pollution, and sanitary reform in late-nineteenth century rural South Wales, Social History of Medicine bi-annual conference, University of Kent
- ‘Epidemiologies of Place’: Fashioning the Romantic and Insanitary Rural Environment in late-Victorian writing on Wales', British Society of Literature and science annual conference, University of Bristol
2015-16
- ‘“misled by the picturesque appearance of villages”: The rural idyll, backwardness, and imagining the rural environment’, SLSA conference, Atlanta
- ‘Digital Texts and Teaching Medical History’, JISC, London
- ‘Cutting against the grain: Frances Burney, Emotion, Pain and the Science Humanities, Cardiff Romanticism and Eighteenth-Century Seminar, Cardiff
- 'Uncertain Cows: Risk, Vets and Debates about Bovine TB and BSE in the nineteenth and twentieth century', Royal Veterinary College / DEFRA
Publications
2021
- Waddington, K. 2021. Problems of progress: modernity and writing the social history of medicine. Social History of Medicine (10.1093/shm/hkaa067)
- Waddington, K. and Willis, M. 2021. Pharmacology, controversy, and the everyday in fin-de-siècle medicine and fiction. In: Lawlor, C. and Mangham, A. eds. Literature and Medicine: Volume 2: The Nineteenth Century., Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambride University Press, pp. 135-153.
- Waddington, K. 2021. A flat past? History, environment, topography, and medicine. Modern and Contemporary France (10.1080/09639489.2020.1868416)
2019
- Davis, O. and Waddington, K. 2019. The final occupation of the settlement. In: Sharples, N. ed. A Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides: Excavations on Mounds 2 and 2A, Bornais, South Uist. Oxbow
- Fitzgerald, D.et al. 2019. Two ways of telling this story: Best practice in interdisciplinary collaboration. Cardiff: ScienceHumanities Initiative, Cardiff University.
2018
- Waddington, K. 2018. Vitriol in the Taff: River pollution, industrial waste, and the politics of control in late nineteenth-century rural Wales. Rural History 29(1), pp. 23-44. (10.1017/S0956793317000164)
2017
- Willis, M., Waddington, K. and Castell, J. 2017. ScienceHumanities: Theory, Politics, Practice. Journal of Literature and Science 10(2), pp. 6-18. (10.12929/jls.10.2.02)
- Castell, J., Waddington, K. and Willis, M. 2017. ScienceHumanities: Introduction. Journal of Literature and Science 10(2), pp. 1-5. (10.12929/jls.10.2.01)
- Waddington, K. 2017. ‘I should have thought that Wales was a wet part of the world’: Drought, rural communities and public health, 1870-1914. Social History of Medicine 30(3), pp. 590-611. (10.1093/shm/hkw118)
- Waddington, K. 2017. The good, the bad and the ugly: sources for essays. In: Loughran, T. ed. A Practical Guide to Studying History. Skills and Approaches. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 185-195.
2015
- Waddington, K. 2015. Introduction. In: Overy, C. and Tansey, E. M. eds. A History of Bovine TB, c.1965-c.2000., Vol. 55. Wellcome Witness to Contemporary Medicine Vol. 55. London: Queen Marty University of London, pp. xv-xviii.
- Mandal, A. and Waddington, K. 2015. The pathology of common life: ‘Domestic’ medicine as Gothic disruption. Gothic Studies 17(1), pp. 43-60. (10.7227/GS.17.1.4)
2014
- Waddington, K. 2014. Thinking regionally: narrative, the medical humanities and region. Medical Humanities 41, pp. 51-56. (10.1136/medhum-2014-010579)
- Waddington, K. 2014. “In a country every way by nature favourable to health”: Landscape and public health in Victorian rural Wales. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 31(2), pp. 183-204. (10.3138/cbmh.31.2.183)
2013
- Waddington, K. 2013. "We don't want any German sausages here!" Food, fear, and the German nation in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Journal of British Studies 52(4), pp. 1017-1042. (10.1017/jbr.2013.178)
- Waddington, K. 2013. Death at St Bernard's: anti-vivisection, medicine and the Gothic. Journal of Victorian Culture 18(2), pp. 246-262. (10.1080/13555502.2013.778209)
- Willis, M., Waddington, K. and Marsden, R. 2013. Imaginary investments: illness narratives beyond the gaze. Journal of Literature and Science 6(1), pp. 55-73. (10.12929/jls.06.1.04)
- Waddington, K. 2013. Forum: Victorian Built Environments: University College Hospital. Victorian Review 39(1), pp. 50-54.
2012
- Waddington, K. 2012. 'It might not be a nuisance in a country cottage': Sanitary conditions and images of health in Victorian rural Wales. Rural History 23(2), pp. 185-204. (10.1017/S0956793312000064)
- Willis, M., Waddington, K. and Marsden, R. 2012. The off-sick project. [Website].
2011
- Waddington, K. 2011. An introduction to the social history of medicine: Europe since 1500. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Waddington, K. 2011. The Dangerous Sausage: Diet, Meat and Disease in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Cultural and Social History 8(1), pp. 51-71. (10.2752/147800411X12858412044393)
- Waddington, K., Thomas, R. H. and Willis, M. 2011. Reading general paralysis of the insane. Practical Neurology 11(6), pp. 366-369. (10.1136/practneurol-2011-000112)
- Waddington, K., Thomas, R. and Willis, M. 2011. General paralysis of the insane. Practical Neurology 11, pp. 366-369. (10.1136/practneurol-2011-000112)
2010
- Waddington, K. 2010. More like cooking than science: Narrating the Inside of the laboratory, Britain 1880-1914. Journal of Literature and Science 3(1), pp. 50-70.
- Waddington, K. 2010. Mad and coughing cows: Bovine tuberculosis, BSE and health in twentieth century Britain. In: Cantor, D., Bonah, C. and Dörries, M. eds. Meat, Medicine and Human Health in the Twentieth Century. Studies for the Society for the Social History of Medicine London: Pickering & Chatto, pp. 159-177.
2009
- Waddington, K. 2009. 'Not for ourselves, but for the others?': Die Rhetorik der Wohltätigkeit und der sozialen Zurschaustellung. In: Liedke, R. and Weber, K. eds. Religion und Philanthropie in den Europäischen Zivilgesellschaften. Entwicklungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Ferdinand Schöningh, pp. 55-71.
2006
- Waddington, K. 2006. The bovine scourge: neat, tuberculosis and public health, 1850-1914. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
- Waddington, K. 2006. Paying for the sick poor: financing a poor law workhouse. In: Gorsky, M. and Sheard, S. eds. Financing British Medicine: The British Experience since 1750. Routledge Studies in the Social History of Medicine London: Routledge, pp. 95-111.
2005
- Waddington, K. 2005. Hotbeds of Bohemianism? Teaching hospitals, clinical care and the patient, 1800-1914. In: Andresen, A., Gronlie, T. and Skålevåg, S. A. eds. Hospitals, Patients and Medicine 1800-2000. Rokkan Centre, pp. 79-81.
2004
- Waddington, K. 2004. To stamp out "so terrible a malady": Bovine tuberculosis and tuberculin testing in Britain, 1890-1939. Medical History 48(1), pp. 29-48. (10.1017/S0025727300007043)
2003
- Waddington, K. 2003. Medical education at St. Bartholomew's hospital, 1123 - 1995. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
- Waddington, K. 2003. Subscribing to a Democracy? Management and the Voluntary Ideology of the London Hospitals, 1850-1900. English Historical Review 118(476), pp. 357-379. (10.1093/ehr/118.476.357)
- Waddington, K. 2003. "Unfit for human consumption": Tuberculosis and the problem of infected meat in late Victorian Britain. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77(3), pp. 636-661. (10.1353/bhm.2003.0147)
2002
- Waddington, K. 2002. Mayhem and medical students: Image, conduct, and control in the Victorian and Edwardian London Teaching Hospital. Social History of Medicine 15(1), pp. 45-64. (10.1093/shm/15.1.45)
2001
- Waddington, K. 2001. The science of cows: Tuberculosis, research and the state in the United Kingdom, 1890-1914. History of Science 39(3/125), pp. 355-381.
2000
- Waddington, K. 2000. 'Leaders of Educational Purpose': the foundation of academic medicine 1890s-1940s. Medical Education 34(12), pp. 1032-1035. (10.1111/j.1365-2923.2000.00827.x)
- Waddington, K. 2000. Charity and the London Hospitals, 1850-1898. Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
1998
- Waddington, K. 1998. Unsuitable cases: The debate over outpatient admissions, the medical profession and late-Victorian London Hospitals. Medical History 42(1), pp. 26-46.
- Waddington, K. 1998. Enemies Within: Postwar Bethlem and the Maudsley. In: Gijswijt-Hofstra, M. and Porter, R. eds. Culture of psychiatry and mental health care in postwar Britain and the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Rodopi Bv Editions, pp. 185-202.
1997
- Andrews, J.et al. 1997. History of Bethlem. Abingdon: Routledge.
1995
- Waddington, K. 1995. The Nursing Dispute at Guy's Hospital, 1879–1880. Social History of Medicine 8(2), pp. 211-230. (10.1093/shm/8.2.211)
1994
- Waddington, K. 1994. Bastard benevolence: centralisation, voluntarism and the Sunday Fund 1873–1898. The London Journal 19(2), pp. 151-167.
Teaching
Undergraduate
- Making of the Modern World - 20 credits
- History in Practice - 20 credits
- Modern Britain - 20 credits
- Projecting the Past - 20 credits
- World full of Gods - 20 credits
- Exploring Historical Debate - 30 credits
- Approaches to History - 30 credits
- The Dangerous City? Urban Society & Culture 1800-1914 - 30 credits
- Dissertation - 30 credits (HS1801)
Postgraduate research
I accept suitably qualified PhD students interested in all aspects of the social history of medicine, environmental history, and social history related to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain as well as related fields in Victorian urban and social history.
Research interests
- Environmental history
- Social History of Medicine
- Victorian Public Health
- Literature, Science, and Medicine
- Interdisciplinary ways of working
Current research projects
Health and pollution regulation in the Victorian and Edwardian rural environment
This project bridges environmental history and the medical humanities to investigate health and pollution regulation in the Victorian and Edwardian rural environment. The project uses a cross-regional analysis to explore how rural communities engaged with poor environmental quality as well as the development and limits of regulation and the actors involved. I focus particularly on ideas and practices of expertise and authority, community responses, landscape and isolation, as well as notions of backwardness and agency, to investigate the physical and regulatory infrastructures put in place to address rural environmental concerns.
Drought and the rural environment
From 1884 onwards, Britain experienced a series of major droughts, which reached their peak in the ‘Long Drought’ (1890-1909). Using rural Wales as a case study, this project explores vulnerabilities to water scarcity during periods of drought to examine the material and socio-political impact of water scarcity and the resulting environmental and health problems faced in rural areas. In addressing how droughts in rural communities were physical and social phenomena that generated considerable alarm about infectious disease, the project explores how periods of water scarcity were an important determinant in improvements to rural water provision.
ScienceHumanities
To find out more about this collaborative project, visit the blog at: https://cardiffsciencehumanities.org/
Supervision
I accept suitably qualified PhD students interested in all aspects of the social history of medicine and environmental history related to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain as well as related fields in Victorian urban and social history.