Professor Roger Cooter
Roger Cooter joined the Centre in October 2002 as a Wellcome Professorial Fellow. He specialises in the social history of ideas in science and medicine, 18th to the 20th century. He has published on the history and historiography of alternative medicine, medical ethics, medical politics, the popularisation of science, phrenology, orthopaedics, child health, accidents, war and medicine, food-safety research, death, and disability. Co-editor and contributer to Medicine in the Twentieth Century (2000), he is currently working on the history of the historiography of medicine and the body; an Anglo–American history of medical ethics; and a history of biopolitics and visualization strategies in Germany and Britain, c.1880–1940. He is the co-editor of Medical History.
Research
We don't inhabit the intellectual space that we did twenty or even ten years ago. My recent work on the history of the historiography of medicine to post-postmodern times also sets the agenda for my current research into 'biocitizenship' in the visual culture of Germany and Britain, c.1880-1940, and that on Anglo-American medical ethics and the history of humanism in the 19th and 20th centuries. For the politics of both, I'm striving for new approaches to new questions informed by the history of the present.
Profile
| 1970 | BA, Simon Fraser University |
| 1972 | MA, University of Durham |
| 1978 | PhD, University of Cambridge |
| 1980 | Research Fellow, University of Oxford |
| 1984 | Senior Research Fellow, University of Manchester |
| 1995 | Reader, University of Manchester |
| 1998 | Professor, University of East Anglia |
| 2002 | Professorial Fellow, WTCHM |
Pre-publications
Select Publications
The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: phrenology and the organization of consent in nineteenth century Britain (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp418.
Editor, Studies in the History of Alternative Medicine (London: Macmillan; New York: St.Martins, 1988), pp200.
Phrenology in the British Isles: an annotated historical biobibliography and index (Metuchen, N.J./London: Scarecrow Press, l989), pp449.
Editor, In the Name of the Child: Health and Welfare, 1880-1940 (London/New York: Routledge, 1992), 404 p. ISBN 0-415-05743-4.
Surgery and Society in Peace and War: Orthopaedics and the Organization of Modern Medicine, 1880-1948 (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp399.
Editor (with B. Luckin), Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities and Social Relations (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), pp273.
Editor (with M. Harrison and S. Sturdy), War, Medicine and Modernity (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), pp258.
Editor (with M. Harrison and S. Sturdy), Medicine and Modern Warfare (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), pp286.
Editor (with J.V. Pickstone), Medicine in the Twentieth Century (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), pp756.
Phrenology In Europe and America (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 2001). 8 volumes of selected readings, with Introduction, pp.xv-xxxi.
When Paddy Met Geordie: The Irish in County Durham and Newcastle 1840-1880 (Sunderland: University of Sunderland Press, 2005), pp.272.
Articles
'The Politics of a Spatial Innovation: Fracture Clinics in Inter-war Britain', in J.V. Pickstone (ed.), Medical Innovations in Historical Perspective (Macmillan, London, 1992), 146-64, 255-63.
'War and Modern Medicine', in W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds), Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (Routledge, London/New York, 1993), 1536-73.
'Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularisation and Science in Popular Culture', History of Science, 32, (1994), 237-67, (with Stephen Pumphrey).
'The Resistible Rise of Medical Ethics', Social History of Medicine, 8 (1995), 275-88.
'The Moment of the Accident: Culture, Militarism and Modernity in Late-Victorian Britain' in Cooter and Luckin (eds), Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities and Social Relations (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), 107-57.
'Science, Scientific Management and the Transformation of Medicine in Britain, c.1870-1950', History of Science, 36 (1998), 421-66, (with Steve Sturdy).
‘Malingering in Modernity: Psychological Scripts and Adversarial Encounters during the First World War’, in Cooter, M. Harrison and Sturdy (eds), War, Medicine and Modernity (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), 125-48.
Food Matters: Food Safety Research in the UK Public Sector, 1917-1990’, Food Industry Journal, 4 (2001), 251-61, (with Rorie Fulton).
'Exploring Natural Knowledge: Science and the Popular in the Eighteenth Century' in Cambridge History of Science, vol.4: Roy Porter (ed.), Science in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 145-79, (with Mary Fissell).
'Of Wars and Epidemics: Unnatural Couplings, Problematic Conceptions', Social History of Medicine , 16 (2003), 283-302.
'The Traffic in Victorian Bodies: Medicine, Literature and History' Victorian Studies , 45 (2003), 513-27.
'The Rise and Decline of the Medical Member: Doctors in Parliament in Edwardian and Interwar Britain', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 78 (2004), 59-107.
'Medicine in War', in Deborah Brunton (ed.) Medicine Transformed: Health, Disease and Society in Europe, 1800-1930 (Manchester: Open University/Manchester University Press, 2004), 331-63.
'"Framing" the End of the Social History of Medicine' in Frank Huisman and John Harley Warner (eds) Locating Medical History: The Stories and Their Meanings (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 309-37.
'After Death/After-"life": The Social History of Medicine in Post-Postmodernity', Social History of Medicine, 74 (Dec. 2007)
‘Protect Yourself’ in Public Health Campaigns: Getting the Message Across (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2009), pp.66-88 (with Claudia Stein). Translated into 6 languages.
‘The Life of a Disease’, Lancet, 375 (9 January 2010), pp.111-12.
‘Positioning the Image of Aids’, Endeavour, 34, (2010) pp. 12-15 (with Claudia Stein)
‘The Turn of the Body: History and the Politics of the Corporeal’, Arbor Ciencia, Pensamiento y cultur, 186 (2010), 393-405.
‘Cracking Biopower’ History of the Human Sciences, 23 (2010), pp.109-28 (with Claudia Stein)
‘Visual Imagery and Epidemics in the Twentieth Century,’ in David Serlin (ed), Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 169-192 (with Claudia Stein).
'Positioning the image of AIDS', Endeavour 34 (2010), pp. 12-15
‘Inside the Whale Again: Bioethics in History and Discourse’, Social History of Medicine, (Dec. 2010), 662-72.
‘Visual Objects and Universal Meanings: AIDS Posters and the Politics of Globalization and History’ Medical History, 55 (Jan. 2011), 85-108 (with Claudia Stein, CHOM, Warwick)
In Press:
‘La médicine dans la pensée historique contemporaine’ in Bernardino Fantini (ed.), Historire de la pensée médicale contemporaine (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2011)
‘Medicine and Modernity’ in Mark Jackson (ed.), Handbook of Medical History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)
‘NeuroPatients in Historyland’ in Stephen Casper and Stephen Jacyna (eds), The Neurological Patient (Rochester University Press, 2011)
‘Re-Presenting the Future of Medicine’s Past: Toward a Politics of Survival’, Medical History, 55 (July 2011)
