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Morag Allan Campbell in conversation with Caroline Brown about childbirth and women’s mental health in Scotland.

Join historian of healthcare Dr Morag Allan Campbell and University of Dundee Archivist Caroline Brown for an In Conversation event which will shed light on the time, place and social context in which Mary Petrie Smith made her decision to leave Dundee, and on some of the harder to tell stories we often find in family histories.

Morag Allan Campbell and Caroline Brown will speak about what the historical record can tell us about women’s mental illness, and in particular mental illness related to pregnancy and childbirth. The conversation will cover topics including how these illnesses were perceived by the women who experienced them, their families, and the wider community, the sources that can help us shed light on them, and ways in which we can share these stories today.

Dr. Morag Allan Campbell
Dr Morag Allan Campbell is a researcher of women in medicine and healthcare in Britain during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her PhD thesis, ‘This Distressing Malady: Childbirth and Mental Illness in Scotland 1820-1930,’ examined medical, family and community narratives, and the care and treatment of women suffering from mental illness associated with pregnancy and childbirth, and specifically the experiences of women in Dundee, Fife and Forfarshire between 1820 and 1930.

Caroline Brown
Caroline Brown is University Archivist and Assistant Director in the Library and Learning Centre and Culture and Information. She has responsibility for Archives, Museums and Information Governance. A history graduate who took her Diploma in Archival Studies at University College Dublin, Caroline has worked at the Business Archives Council in London, the Rhodes Trust in Oxford, Edinburgh University and at the National Archives of Scotland. Caroline also spent several years as Programme Leader for the University’s distance learning programmes in Archives and Records Management and Family History and is still active in areas of research and teaching. She is currently a Trustee of the Scottish Council on Archives, a Director of the Scottish Archive Network, a member of the Executive Board of the International Council on Archives and Chair of its Section on University and Research Institution Archives (ICA-SUV).

Booking via eventbrite

Information published by Leisure and Culture Dundee.