Dr Anna Jamieson

Thanks to @cambridgebookshop.bsky.social for this wonderful window display featuring Keeping Hold!

Publication day! My book Keeping Hold: A Cultural and Social History of Possession in Eighteenth-Century Britain is out now. 20% discount code KEHO2026. www.cambridge.org/core/books/k...

Art and the Critical Medical Humanities new book - Durham University

🎉 Announcing the launch of an agenda-setting collection of essays exploring how art and art-history can transform understandings of health, illness, care and medical knowledge. Edited by @drfijohnstone.bsky.social Allison Morehead and Imogen Wiltshire 🧵
@durham.ac.uk @languagesdurham.bsky.social

18 month postdoc at the lovely IHR in London, $41,740. Deadline 7 March. 'The Fellow will play a key role within the IHR team responsible for hosting the 2027 North American Conference in British Studies (NACBS)' in London 2027.

Repost to spread the word. #Skystorians

The Senses and Medical Humanities A one-day workshop exploring sensory studies and medical humanities through short talks, creative activities, and networking.

I'm delighted to share details of the first of two workshops I'm hosting this year on The Senses and Medical Humanities. The first workshop will take place in Durham on 24 February. Spaces are limited, so reserve yours now.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-senses...

CALL FOR PAPERS: PERFORMING EVIL: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres, 1700-2000'. 4 & 5 June 2026, Leuven. This conference explores the tangled histories of supernatural, diabolic evil and all kinds of spectral apparitions in the last three centuries – Walter Scott’s ‘malignant and unhappy beings’. Specifically, it is interested in how and why ghosts, spirits and related apparitional phenomena were framed as diabolic, demonic or malign manifestations from the afterlife. Diabolic connotations of ghosts and spirits did meaningful cultural work. They were mobilised to discredit ghost beliefs and spiritual practices, to delegitimise competing beliefs, or to invest doctrinal arguments with occult authority. They could also function as tools of scepticism and ridicule as well as triggers of wonder, fear and religiosity. Put differently, the nexus of ghosts and evil is deeply historical. And it was often articulated through performative means: in gestures and expressions of (dis)belief, in visual and textual representations, in séance rooms, on the stage and on the page. Emerging from this nexus are theatrical spirits of evil, staged, embodied, and made legible through mediation and display. In this sense, every ghost is a theatrical ghost. Through the focus on the construction and staging of diabolic spirits, this conference aims to develop a methodological framework for studying historical forms of occultism and demonology more broadly in terms of performance.

Exploring how the relationship of spectrality and evil has shifted in shape over time and across different cultures, the conference invites contributions that can consider a wide range of historical actors – clerics, mediums, ghost-hunters, debunkers, necromancers, stage performers, eyewitnesses. This conference aims to study cultural intersections and interactions to arrive at a more granular understanding of discursive, practical and material connections between spirits and evil. At the same time this lens zooms out, making visible broader dynamics of knowledge construction in specific historical moments. How, for instance, did hauntings and possessions shape communities and audiences? How did religious or folkloric ideas about the devil inform spectral encounters? We hope to bring together historians, art historians, theatre and literary scholars, folklorists and anthropologists from every stage in their career around the above questions. We welcome 20-minute papers on topics that include but are by no means limited to: - making spectral evil visible: performance, arts, media, technologies, popular cultures - making spectral evil invisible: popular and occult knowledge circulation - performing (un)belief: practices and rhetoric, summoning and debunking on the stage (from popular stages to the lecture hall and the laboratory) - materiality of spectres: the function of bodies and objects - diabolic spirits and (intellectual, vernacular, theological, folkloric) ideas about morality, mortality and temporality - occult performance and ‘cultural scripts’ of ghost encounters (from necromancy to poltergeists) - affect and emotions: fear, grief, trauma… and hope Send abstracts (c.250 words) and bios (c.100 words) to kristof.smeyers@kuleuven.be before 21 March 2026. Please do get in touch if you have any questions.

Hi everyone, I'm organising a conference in Leuven, 4-5 June, and you're all invited*! It's called 'Performing evil: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres 1700-2000' and here is the call for papers (get in touch if you'd like a pdf!). Please share widely!

*to submit an abstract before 21/3

Cover of a book "Edited by Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow and Laura Cowley. Sick jokes: Visual histories of humour, health and the body." The cover image is a black-and-white photograph of a white man with short hair, a gold earring, stubble, glasses, and an oxygen tube. He makes eye contact with the viewer and his mouth is slightly open, perhaps in a smile. His hospital gown is pulled up to reveal both a Kaposi's lesion and a smiley face tattoo.

Table of Contents Introduction Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow and Laura Cowley PART I – PATHOLOGIES AND POWER IN PRINT Chapter 1 – ‘Uncorking Old Sherry’: Alcohol, the body and political decline in visual culture. The case of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Callum Smith Chapter 2 – Bedroom eyes as bedside manner: Humorous expressions of medical impropriety in mid-nineteenth-century visual culture Rebecca Whiteley Chapter 3 – ‘The top set’s artificial, but the bottom’s my own!’: Comic representations of false teeth and denture users in mid-twentieth-century British seaside postcards Georgia Haire PART II – DYING LAUGHING: DEATH, DISFIGUREMENT, DISEASE, AND DISABILITY Chapter 4 – Dancing, laughing and sexing (with) death: Edvard Munch’s gendered medical humour Allison Morehead Chapter 5 – Tube pedicles and positionality: The visual humour of a plastic surgery technique Christine Slobogin Chapter 6 – The bittersweet look(s) of AIDS: Consuming the ironic waste of HIV/AIDS imagery (and other butts of the joke) in Diseased Pariah News Jo Michael Rezes Chapter 7 – Irony, assisted dying and The Disabled Avant-Garde Laura Cowley PART III – COMICAL HEALTH COMMUNICATIONS Chapter 8 – ‘Doctor, are you speaking in tongues?’: Humour and the health humanities of Selma and Lois DeBakey Jeffrey S. Reznick Chapter 9 – Tough Shit Thomas and Peanut Pete: Harm reduction comics and British identities in the 1990s Peder Clark Chapter 10 – Pandemic funnies: Humour in COVID-19 comics Soha Bayoumi

Much needed good news: _Sick Jokes_ is in production @katiesnow.bsky.social @lauracowley.bsky.social

Our brilliant authors have written chapters on the intersection of visual culture, humor, and health (see ToC)

And we're thrilled with the cover from @manchesterup.bsky.social - more in next post.

Lovely to see _Art and the Critical Medical Humanities_ out in open access format!!

Co-authored a chapter with my humor co-conspirators @katiesnow.bsky.social and @lauracowley.bsky.social - and so many other brilliant folks included in this volume!!

www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?do...

Early Career Researcher Network An inclusive, researcher-led network for UK-based early career researchers working in the humanities and social sciences

2025 has been a rotten year for most early career postdoctoral researchers, especially in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

For a better 2026, check out (or repost) this short thread on a free resource for UK-based SHAPE PhDs within 10 years (excluding career breaks) of the doctorate. 1/3

Really looking forward to roundtable on Plantation Goods happening at UoB this Friday. All welcome! www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/round...

Huge thanks to @annafranjam.bsky.social and @rebeccawhiteley.bsky.social for organising such a fantastic day of 'Object Stories in Health and Medicine, 1700-1900', and to all speakers for sharing such thoughtful approaches to this fascinating and wide-ranging field.

I have signed up and I can't wait!

Join me online at 10am GMT this Friday for my talk:
'Straightening Childhood: The Le Vacher Machine and Maternal Regulation of the Body in Georgian England.'

I’ll be exploring how mothers read, managed & reshaped children’s bodies through the corrective device featured below, and others like it 👇

Still time to sign up for our online event *Object Stories in Health and Medicine* on Friday 5 December! We've got a fantastic programme with panels on Wearable Objects, Object Biographies, Representing the Body, Personal Papers and Domestic Health. One week today
@rebeccawhiteley.bsky.social

Still time to sign up for our online event *Object Stories in Health and Medicine* on Friday 5 December! We've got a fantastic programme with panels on Wearable Objects, Object Biographies, Representing the Body, Personal Papers and Domestic Health. One week today
@rebeccawhiteley.bsky.social

Only a few days until registration closes: Nov 30th #18c #BSECS2026 Make sure you get registered. When it is closed, it is closed!

It's here! Our special issue of JECS (journal of @bsecs.bsky.social), a bumper vol of cutting-edge interdisciplinary research on 18c networks, gender, sociability & manuscript, deriving from @maryhamiltonpapers.bsky.social project. I'll be skeeting today about the contributions in turn...stay tuned!

Cover of JECS special issue 48.4 (December 2025), with ToC and network diagram. DOI: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17540208/2025/48/4

At last our special issue, JECS 48.4, is out, all 200+ pages of it! We're very proud of it. Thanks are due to many colleagues, but especially Nuria Yáñez-Bouza for proof-correcting heroics, and the general editor, Emrys Jones, for brilliant support throughout. #18thC #langsky

My contribution explores how space, sociability & letter-writing were conceptualised as strategies of self care by female correspondents in the Hamilton archive. Many thanks to @sophiecoulombeau.bsky.social, Nuria Yáñez-Bouza & David Denison and the JECS team for all their hard work on the issue!

‘I was so ill, and so low…’: Women, Mental Health, and Strategies of Care in The Mary Hamilton Papers This article examines how space, sociability, and letter-writing are conceptualised as self-care strategies by female correspondents in the Hamilton archive. Building on a recent proliferation of int....

Thrilled to be part of this special issue and to see my article, "I was so ill, and so low…’: Women, Mental Health and Strategies of Care in The Mary Hamilton Papers' now online #openaccess @maryhamiltonpapers.bsky.social #mentalhealth #womenshist
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Recovery and rehabilitation in mental health: Historical perspectives - Hannah Blythe, Sarah Marks, 2025 Recovery and rehabilitation are highly charged terms in contemporary mental health, with their meanings and implications contested by professionals and survivor...

I’ve be co-editing a special issue of @histhum.bsky.social with @sarahvmarks.bsky.social on

Recovery and rehabilitation in mental health: historical perspectives

Our Intro article is available now! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A few more tickets remain for the poetry reading at the @byleaveswelive.bsky.social on Wednesday, Nov 19, 1.30-3.30pm. We'll talk about the ways in which poets represented their experiences as patients and doctors throughout history.

Research Fellow x2 (109856-1125) at University of Warwick Discover Research Fellow x2 (109856-1125) jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.

2 fantastic-looking history of medicine research fellowships at Warwick: Traumatised Minds, Neurosis and Hysteria in Soviet Medicine and Culture, 1917-1953

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPK288/r...

RETHINKING RIGOUR: a two-day symposium on creative-critical research in medical humanities organised by the NNMHR.

Explore method, assessment, and new possibilities for scholar-practitioners.

🗓️ Dec 4–5, Durham + online
🎟️ Free via Eventbrite: nnmh.org.uk/rethinking-r...

North American scholars come and work at Birmingham for a month. Deadline 15 November! #nacbs

www.birmingham.ac.uk/about/colleg...

Remote parenting across the life-cycle: evidence from letters about children's health, c.1650-1750

We will return on 18th. November with Emma Marshall, who will present 'Remote parenting across the life-cycle: evidence from letters about children's health, c.1650-1750'.
Further details can be found through the link.
www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

I was the recipient of the Ann Ball Bodley Visiting Fellowship to Women's History at @bodleian.ox.ac.uk in 2023 - and can't recommend this fellowship enough. An amazing place to research, read and write. Deadline 28th Nov 2025 for applications #womenshist

I’ll be speaking about the very object featured below - the Le Vacher machine - and how mothers in Georgian England used devices like it to 'straighten' children’s bodies. #HistMed #MaterialCulture #MedicalHumanities #18thCentury

Painting of a white woman with shoulder length brown hair, wearing a red dress, viewers from behind. She is in a room with pale yellow walls and a chequerboard floor, her hand is raised towards the window in front of her, through which a tree lined street of terraced houses can be seen. On the wall to her right is an oval portrait of a woman with an angry expression. The perspectives in the painting jar with each other and it creates an atmosphere of strangeness and vertiginousness

Painting created by Brenda Marshall c.1957 in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital, Surrey, where she was compelled to live.
A substantial number of her works survive, they explore painful & traumatic family relationships, details of which are sometimes noted on the backs of her paintings

Less than a month to go until our free online workshop *Object Stories in Health and Medicine, 1700-1900*. Friday 5 December from 10am GMT. Tickets available through this link! 
www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/objec...