Dr Katharina Rowold

Biography

I am a cultural and social historian with a research specialism in the history of infancy and motherhood, and medicine and psychoanalysis. I studied History, Geography, and History of Art for two years at the University of Salamanca in Spain before coming to the UK and completing a BA (Hons) in Modern History at the University of London. I subsequently received my PhD in the History of Medicine from UCL. Before joining Essex in 2022, I held posts at University College London, London Metropolitan University, and the University of Roehampton. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Historical Society. My first book was a comparative history of gender and education. It explored the multi-layered roles of science and medicine in debates on women’s entry to university in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Britain, Germany, and Spain, and payed close attention to the various ways contemporary feminists negotiated and reconstituted conceptions of the female mind and its relationship to the body. More recently, my research has focused on infancy and motherhood in Britain and transnationally. I have published a series of related articles in Medical History, Cultural and Social History and other journals. Currently, I am working on a project on the history of breastfeeding in Britain from 1850 to 1950, which examines the relationship between ideologies of breastfeeding, changing understandings of infancy and motherhood, and women's lived experiences. I currently lead with Niamh Cullen (Queen’s University Belfast) an AHRC-funded research network on ‘Institutions and Infant Care: Foundling Homes and Residential Homes for Babies in Twentieth Century Europe’. In the context of this network, my research focuses on the history of residential nurseries in post-war England. It explores the intersections of changing theories on infants, motherhood, and the mother-infant relationship with policies on the residential care of babies and young children. I welcome proposals for PhDs in any area relating to Childhood Studies, but particularly in relation to the social and cultural history of childhood and infancy, the history of child psychoanalysis, child psychology, and the medical humanities.

Qualifications

• BA University of London,

• PhD University College London,

Appointments

University of Essex

• Course Director BA Childhood Studies, Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex (24/4/2023 - 31/8/2024)

• Director of Impact, Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex (22/4/2024 - present)