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History of Britain’s burns injuries to be charted in new research
The research team is made up of: Dr Shane Ewen, project Co-Investigator and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Humanities at Leeds Beckett; Professor Jonathan Reinarz, Principal Investigator; and Dr Rebecca Wynter, Research Fellow, both based within the University of Birmingham’s History of Medicine Unit. Together they will draw together expertise from a variety of fields, including the history of medicine, the senses, trauma, disability, emergency services and urban history to explore the social and cultural history of burns and their connection to our country’s identity. The ‘Forged by Fire: Burns Injury and Identity in Britain, c. 1800-2000’ project has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Dr Ewen explained: “Throughout the past two centuries, Britons have experienced personal and collective tragedies involving burns and scalds, which have been connected to British culture and society and were rooted in the habits, practices and material culture of home, workplace, war, and leisure.
“Using the distinctive residential and industrial settings of three case studies: Glasgow, Birmingham and London, including perspectives from Belfast and Cardiff, as well as ‘iconic’ fires and disasters, our project will investigate how burns have shaped individual, group and urban identity in modern Britain.
“Not only will this embrace explorations of professional identity, from the emergency services and burns teams to wounded service personnel, but it will also include class, gender and race through considerations of, for example, acid-attacked women and the New Cross fire of 1981.”
The team will be charting a historical geography of burns incidents in these cities, producing digital maps that illustrate the relationship between urban space and burns injuries across a period of significant social and economic change.
The project will also generate an innovative programme of public engagement and burns awareness activities, including a graphic novel by artist Sarah Silverwood Taylor, which will be produced in collaboration with local fire services and other partner organisations involved in the project.
For further information on the project, please contact Shane Ewen at s.ewen@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.