Professor Keir Waddington
(he/him)

BA MA PhD

: Media commentator
: Available for postgraduate supervision

Teams and roles for Keir Waddington

Professor of History
School of History, Archaeology and Religion

I am historian whose research explores the history of medicine, health, environment, and society from the eighteenth century to the present day. My work examines the ways in which the environment and health have shaped everyday life, public policy, and social relationships in the long nineteenth century, with a particular focus on Britain and Wales.

My current research thinks about how Victorian and Edwardian communities understood the environment around them and responded to environmental hazards from polluted water supplies to water precarity. A key part of this work is an examination of the lived experiences of drought in the long nineteenth century.

As a result, my work has taken a distinctly watery turn. I am working with Professor Martin Willis (English) on a number of projects related to the literature and the Blue Humanities, while we co-lead the ScienceHumanities Initiative, a major project that considers ways of working across and between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, now and in the past. More information on the ScienceHumanities Initiative can be found on its website (https://cardiffsciencehumanities.org).

My teaching of urban and environmental history reflects my commitment to intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and the exploration of history's relevance to contemporary society.

I welcome inquiries from potential research students interested in studying the social history of medicine and science and environmental history; and queries from public groups or media outlets interested in my research and scholarship.

For further information on my present research projects and publications, please click the relevant tab above.

Date
Type

2026

Waddington, K. 2026. Living with drought in the long nineteenth century. The Historical Journal 69 (3), pp.589-610. (10.1017/S0018246X25101350)
Willis, M. and Waddington, K. 2026. Writing an imagined immunity: Sleep, sleeplessness, and the fight against infection. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 69 (2), pp.214-228. (10.1353/pbm.2026.a998091)
Waddington, K. 2026. Cities: Cities, hazards and their hinterlands. In: Bates, V. , Gomez, R. and Abrams, A. eds. The Routledge Handbook of Health and Environmental Humanities. Routledge Handbooks London: Routledge. , pp.557-568. (10.4324/9781003404866-54)

2025

Scown, J. , Waddington, K. and Willis, M. 2025. A world after the pandemic: COVID-19 narratives, environment, and histories of the future. In: Butler, M. et al., Coming to Terms with a Crisis: Cultural Engagements with COVID-19. Transcript. , pp.277-300.

2024

Waddington, K. 2024. ‘In constant fear of some dire epidemic breaking out’: Rural responses to infectious and epidemic disease, 1870–1920. Rural History 35 (2), pp.211-232. (10.1017/S0956793324000025)
Waddington, K. 2024. Resistance and prevention: Rural local government and the fight against tuberculosis. Modern British History 35 (2), pp.180-198. (10.1093/tcbh/hwae034)

2023

Waddington, K. and Willis, M. 2023. Treatment. In: Altschuler, S. , Metzl, J. and Wald, P. eds. Keywords for Health Humanities. Keywords New York: New York University Press. , pp.209-211.
Waddington, K. 2023. “Kindly see to the matter”: Local communities and the development of rural public health, 1870-1920. In: Borowy, I. and Harris, B. eds. Yearbook for the History of Global Development. Vol. 2, Berlin: De Gruyter. , pp.31-58. (10.1515/9783111015583-002)

2015

Mandal, A. and Waddington, K. 2015. The pathology of common life: ‘Domestic’ medicine as Gothic disruption. Gothic Studies 17 (1), pp.43-60. (10.7227/GS.17.1.4)
Waddington, K. 2015. Introduction. In: Overy, C. and Tansey, E. M. eds. A History of Bovine TB, c.1965-c.2000. Vol. 55, Wellcome Witness to Contemporary Medicine Vol. 55.London: Queen Marty University of London. , pp.xv-xviii.

2014

Waddington, K. 2014. Thinking regionally: narrative, the medical humanities and region. Medical Humanities 41 , pp.51-56. (10.1136/medhum-2014-010579)
Waddington, K. 2014. “In a country every way by nature favourable to health”: Landscape and public health in Victorian rural Wales. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 31 (2), pp.183-204. (10.3138/cbmh.31.2.183)

2013

Waddington, K. and Willis, M. eds. 2013. Rethinking approaches to illness narratives [Co-edition of special issue of Journal of Literature and Science]. University of Westminster.
Waddington, K. 2013. Death at St Bernard's: anti-vivisection, medicine and the Gothic. Journal of Victorian Culture 18 (2), pp.246-262. (10.1080/13555502.2013.778209)
Waddington, K. 2013. Forum: Victorian Built Environments: University College Hospital. Victorian Review 39 (1), pp.50-54.
Waddington, K. 2013. "We don't want any German sausages here!" Food, fear, and the German nation in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Journal of British Studies 52 (4), pp.1017-1042. (10.1017/jbr.2013.178)
Willis, M. , Waddington, K. and Marsden, R. 2013. Imaginary investments: illness narratives beyond the gaze. Journal of Literature and Science 6 (1), pp.55-73. (10.12929/jls.06.1.04)

2012

Waddington, K. 2012. 'It might not be a nuisance in a country cottage': Sanitary conditions and images of health in Victorian rural Wales. Rural History 23 (2), pp.185-204. (10.1017/S0956793312000064)
Willis, M. , Waddington, K. and Marsden, R. 2012. The off-sick project. [Website]

2011

Waddington, K. 2011. An introduction to the social history of medicine: Europe since 1500. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Waddington, K. 2011. The Dangerous Sausage: Diet, Meat and Disease in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Cultural and Social History 8 (1), pp.51-71. (10.2752/147800411X12858412044393)
Waddington, K. , Thomas, R. H. and Willis, M. 2011. General paralysis of the insane. Practical Neurology 11 , pp.366-369. (10.1136/practneurol-2011-000112)

2010

Waddington, K. 2010. Mad and coughing cows: Bovine tuberculosis, BSE and health in twentieth century Britain. In: Cantor, D. , Bonah, C. and Dörries, M. eds. Meat, Medicine and Human Health in the Twentieth Century. Studies for the Society for the Social History of Medicine London: Pickering & Chatto. , pp.159-177.
Waddington, K. 2010. More like cooking than science: Narrating the Inside of the laboratory, Britain 1880-1914. Journal of Literature and Science 3 (1), pp.50-70.

2009

Waddington, K. 2009. 'Not for ourselves, but for the others?': Die Rhetorik der Wohltätigkeit und der sozialen Zurschaustellung. In: Liedke, R. and Weber, K. eds. Religion und Philanthropie in den Europäischen Zivilgesellschaften. Entwicklungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Ferdinand Schöningh. , pp.55-71.

2006

Waddington, K. 2006. Paying for the sick poor: financing a poor law workhouse. In: Gorsky, M. and Sheard, S. eds. Financing British Medicine: The British Experience since 1750. Routledge Studies in the Social History of Medicine London: Routledge. , pp.95-111.
Waddington, K. 2006. The bovine scourge: neat, tuberculosis and public health, 1850-1914. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.

2005

Waddington, K. 2005. Hotbeds of Bohemianism? Teaching hospitals, clinical care and the patient, 1800-1914. In: Andresen, A. , Gronlie, T. and Skålevåg, S. A. eds. Hospitals, Patients and Medicine 1800-2000. Rokkan Centre. , pp.79-81.

2004

Waddington, K. 2004. To stamp out "so terrible a malady": Bovine tuberculosis and tuberculin testing in Britain, 1890-1939. Medical History 48 (1), pp.29-48. (10.1017/S0025727300007043)

2003

Waddington, K. 2003. Subscribing to a Democracy? Management and the Voluntary Ideology of the London Hospitals, 1850-1900. English Historical Review 118 (476), pp.357-379. (10.1093/ehr/118.476.357)
Waddington, K. 2003. Medical education at St. Bartholomew's hospital, 1123 - 1995. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
Waddington, K. 2003. "Unfit for human consumption": Tuberculosis and the problem of infected meat in late Victorian Britain. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77 (3), pp.636-661. (10.1353/bhm.2003.0147)

2002

Waddington, K. 2002. Mayhem and medical students: Image, conduct, and control in the Victorian and Edwardian London Teaching Hospital. Social History of Medicine 15 (1), pp.45-64. (10.1093/shm/15.1.45)

2001

Waddington, K. 2001. The science of cows: Tuberculosis, research and the state in the United Kingdom, 1890-1914. History of Science 39 (3/125), pp.355-381.

2000

Waddington, K. 2000. Charity and the London hospitals, 1850-1898. Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
Waddington, K. 2000. 'Leaders of Educational Purpose': the foundation of academic medicine 1890s-1940s. Medical Education 34 (12), pp.1032-1035. (10.1111/j.1365-2923.2000.00827.x)

1998

Waddington, K. 1998. Enemies within: Postwar Bethlem and the Maudsley. In: Gijswijt-Hofstra, M. and Porter, R. eds. Culture of Psychiatry and Mental Health Care in Postwar Britain and the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Rodopi Bv Editions. , pp.185-202.
Waddington, K. 1998. Unsuitable cases: The debate over outpatient admissions, the medical profession and late-Victorian London Hospitals. Medical History 42 (1), pp.26-46.

1997

Andrews, J. et al., 1997. History of Bethlem. Abingdon: Routledge.

1995

Waddington, K. 1995. The Nursing Dispute at Guy's Hospital, 1879–1880. Social History of Medicine 8 (2), pp.211-230. (10.1093/shm/8.2.211)

1994

Waddington, K. 1994. Bastard benevolence: centralisation, voluntarism and the Sunday Fund 1873–1898. The London Journal 19 (2), pp.151-167.

My research focuses on the study of the social history of medicine and environmental history. My first monograph, History of Bethlem(1997), resulted from a collaborative project with four other academics to demystify Bedlam and explores its history from its foundation to the present.

My second monograph, Charity and the London Hospitals, 1850-1898 (2000) investigated the dynamics of Victorian hospital fundraising and the nature of London charity, while my fourth monograph The bovine scourge: neat, tuberculosis and public health, 1850-1914 started my current research focus on Victorian and Edwardian public health.

I have also published An introduction to the social history of medicine: Europe since 1500 aimed at undergraduates and postgraduates interested in the social history of medicine.

My present research has two key directions: the first bridges environmental history and the medical humanities to investigate how communities understood the environment around them and responded to environmental and climate hazards. The project uses a cross-regional analysis to focus how communities engaged water scarcity and precarity as well as the development and limits of regulation and the actors involved. I focus particularly on ideas and practices of expertise and authority, community responses, landscape and isolation, as well as notions of backwardness and agency, to investigate the physical and regulatory infrastructures put in place to address rural environmental concerns. A key part of this research considers water and water precarity, focusing on the lived experiences and emotions of drought.

The second examines methods of collaboration between the humanities and the sciences, conceived theoretically, politically, and practically. This is undertaken as part of the ScienceHumanities Initiative which I co-lead with Professor Martin Willis, an internationally recognized expert on literature and science. Together, we lead a number of projects aimed at understanding and reinvigorating current methodologies of collaboration, with more recent work focusing on the Blue Humanities. As part of this research we work in partnership with Bremen University's Blue Humanities Research Group, and we host a ScienceHumanities Summer School for international participants. The ScienceHumanities initiative also works in partnership with Fiction meets Science at Bremen University. Our most recent publication is a report Two ways of telling this story: Best practice in interdisciplinary collaboration.

To find out more about this collaborative project, visit the blog at: https://cardiffsciencehumanities.org/

I have led research projects related to all of my areas of interest with the support of funding from the AHRC, The Wellcome Trust, ESRC, and from Cardiff University.

Undergraduate

Making of the Modern World - 20 credits
Global Historries - 20 credits
Reading History - 20 credits
Making History - 20 credits
Environmental Histories - 20 credits
Mayhem and Murder - 20 credits
Dissertation - 40 credits

Postgraduate research

I accept suitably qualified PhD students interested in all aspects of the social history of medicine, environmental history, and social history related to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain as well as related fields in Victorian urban and social history.

I joined Cardiff University as a Research Fellow in September 1999, and since then have worked in a range of roles in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, including as Director of Research and Director of Teaching and Learning. From 2019 to 2022, I was head of History, and from 2023 to 2026 Deputy Head of the School of History, Archaeology and Religion. I am currently Head of History, Archaeology and Heritage in the new School of Global Humanities.

Before taking up the post at Cardiff, I held posts at the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine working with Roy Porter on the History of Bethlem followed by a fellowship at St Bartholomew's and the Royal London School of Medicine and dentistery researching the history of medical education and contributing to the work of the Centre for Medical and Dental Education. I have also worked previously at the University of East Anglia.

I undertook my doctoral work at University College London and held a fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research.

Honours and awards

Current awards

Co-Investigator, Wales Innovation Network small grant for Welsh Energy Humanities to develop collaborations across Wales [with Gavin Williams, Cardiff]

Previous awards since 2014

· Co-Investigator, Wellcome Trust follow-on funding - for a research project examining how a post-pandemic future was imagined during Covid [with Martin Willis, Cardiff]

· Co-Investigator, Welsh Government Supporting Collaborative Research and Innovation in Europe - to develop collaborations with Duke University [with Martin Willis, Cardiff]

· Co-Investigator, Wellcome Trust Small Grant in the Humanities and Social Sciences - for a series of workshops and engagement events exploring the intersections of medicine and the environment [with Newcastle, Bristol, and Liverpool]

· Co-Investigator, Wellcome Trust Small Grant in the Humanities and Social Sciences - for a research project on medicine and the future [with Martin Willis and James Castell, Cardiff]

· Co-Investigator, ESRC Impact Initiator Funding - to undertake initial research examining the methodologies, and practices of humanities and sciences collaborative projects with a view to influencing future directions and policies [with Martin Willis and Des Fitzgerald, Cardiff]

· Co-Investigator, AHRC, ‘Bridging the Gap’ - for a GW4 consortium network with Bath, Bristol, and Exeter universities on co-production of research

· Co-Investigator, ISSF Wellcome Trust, Medical Humanities Collaborative Award - to lead on developing medical and science humanities research projects across Cardiff University in original collaborative forms [with Julie Brown, Medical Education, Cardiff]

· Principal Investigator, Wellcome Trust medical humanities small grant - to undertake research on rural public Health in Victorian and Edwardian Wales

Professional memberships

Editorial Boards

Social History of Medicine
Intersections in Literature and Science, University of Wales Press

UK Research Councils

UKRI Interdisciplinary Assessment College

Advisory boards and committees

MedEnv (Wellcome Trust funded research network)

Committees and reviewing

UK Research councils

Current: UKRI Interdisciplinary assessment college
2021: NERC advisory panel on decolonization
2013: AHRC Peer Review College training panel
2011: AHRC Science in Culture panel
2010: Chair, AHRC Fellowship panels
2006-14: AHRC Peer Review College (commendation for ‘outstanding contribution’ to the peer review college in 2013)

I supervise students on a range of topics on the social history of medicine and environmental history related to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain as well as related fields in Victorian urban and social history.

Among my present supervisees, topics under investigation include: