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Historical Health & The Body Reading Group

21 May 2026, 1:00 pm–2:00 pm

Drawing of two human skeletons

Join us at Wellcome Collection for our Historical Health & The Body Reading Group for PhD, ECR & interested historical researchers.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Organiser

Finn Manders & Katherine Wills

Location

Wellcome Collection (Reading Room)
183 Euston Road
London
NW1 2BE

Article to read.

Please note the room change this week, which sadly means food and drink will not be permitted during this session, so do make sure to eat your lunch first!

We will be moving into the nineteenth century, discussing labour and fatigue in chapter one of Anson Rabinbach's The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (University of California Press, 1992) pp.19-44. Vaishnavi Gondane will be introducing the chapter and has very kindly provided some questions to guide our thinking in advance of the session:

  • What happens when exhaustion becomes ordinary?  
  • How do historians study bodies worn down by systems rather than singular events?
  • How is bodily depletion tied to empire, capitalism, labour, and discipline?  
  • How do archives capture exhaustion, attrition, and slow bodily decline or render them absent altogether? 

This reading group is run by UCL PhD students Finn Manders (Wellcome collaborative doctoral student) & Katherine Wills.

Dates for further sessions

  • 4th June - Viewing room @ Wellcome Collection
  • 18th June - Viewing room @ Wellcome Collection
  • 2nd July - Viewing room @ Wellcome Collection

Open to PhD students, ECRs and other interested historical researchers. For information on upcoming sessions, dates, and reading material, please join the mailing list http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/HEALTHBODYREADINGWELLCOME