Dr Elizabeth Hallam

Contact

Email: elizabeth.hallam@anthro.ox.ac.uk

Elizabeth Hallam is a Research Associate in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, and a Senior research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. She has a BA and PhD from the University of Kent and was Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex (1994-96); Lecturer in Cultural History (1996-98), Director of Cultural History (1998-2002) and Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology (2002-10) at the University of Aberdeen.

Research Interests

Historical anthropology of the body; death and dying; material and visual culture; histories of collecting and museums; anthropology of anatomy, anatomical models; Britain and Europe.

Following her earlier research on ritualised practices of childbirth, sickness and dying in early modern England, she developed her work on the body and death in two co-authored books, Beyond the Body. Death and Social Identity (with Glennys Howarth and Jenny Hockey), and Death, Memory and Material Culture (with Jenny Hockey).

Her research on material and visual culture currently focuses on museums of anatomy in medical schools in Scotland and England where she examines the collection, preservation and display of bodies from the mid-19th century to the present. How bodies have been rendered - in the flesh, in wax, paper and plastic, and through drawing, photography and film - in the pursuit of anatomical knowledge are issues explored in her forthcoming book, Anatomy Museum. Death and the Body Displayed, illustrated with specially commissioned photography.

A further strand of her research explores three-dimensional models of human anatomy in Britain, c.1850 to now, focusing on their design, making and use in medical education. This project is concerned with social relations of models, their changing materials and forms, how they are created and disseminated, and the kinds of knowledge they generate.

Future projects will be developed under the broad theme of material medicine, whch will trace the social and cultural production of medical materials that shape bodily experiences - for example, medical textiles, instruments and furniture, again combining fieldwork with archival and museum-based research.

Elizabeth Hallam website.

Selected publications.

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