Research areas

I am a historian of medicine and welfare based in the Danish Institute for Advanced Study and the Department of Language and Culture at SDU.

My PhD thesis studied the role of voluntary organisations in redefining "disability" in the British welfare state from the 1960s to the 1990s, with a particular focus on the benefits system. I have since written books on British postwar vaccination policy and "the sick note".

From April 2025, I will be PI on a DFF-funded project investigating how complaints about and to the welfare state can help us understand how British and Danish citizens imagined what a welfare state ought to be.

Although I identify as a historian, my research and teaching work is interested in how different disciplines can combine to collaboratively make sense of the world around us. I am part of the Danish Centre for Welfare Studies, which sits across the humanities and social sciences. My work on the contemporary history of welfare and public health has necessitated collaboration with scholars in medicine, comparative literature, and the social, political and computer sciences. I also sit on the Early Career Award interview panel for the Wellcome Trust on their humanities and social sciences arm.