Dr Kate McAllister (she/her)

I am a historian with a PhD in modern British medical history, and interests in chronic illness, mental health and pain.

My PhD project was fully-funded by a generous grant from the Wellcome Trust. Through adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combined history, philosophy, sociology and disability studies, my thesis explored how and why the binary concepts of mental/physical, acute/chronic were built into the structures of healthcare in Britain during the early twentieth century, through tracing the shifting perceptions of and approaches to long-term viral illness. Often unable to be conceptualised as mental or physical, acute or chronic, these illnesses generated problems for the health system and in turn brought these binary structures into focus. Besides providing new perspectives on healthcare in Britain, this project also emphasised the value of history as a tool to critique perceptions of illness and inequalities, and thus to improve current health practice and policy.

My postdoctoral project, funded by the British Academy, provides a transformative history of chronic pain in modern Britain. It is estimated that between one-third to one-half of the British population is affected by chronic pain, most of whom are women (NICE, 2021). Many women nonetheless struggle to have their pain taken seriously and therefore face injustice and inequality. In the late nineteenth century, perceptions of chronic pain were quite different. Then understood as a condition caused by bodily inflammation, and in turn often linked to injuries sustained by male workers, today chronic pain is in contrast defined as an unpleasant individual sensory and emotional experience (NICE, 2024). My project explores the shifting connections between ideas of chronic pain, the economics of industrial Britain and the modern welfare state through a focus on the industrial city of Sheffield. Analysing medical, scientific and psychiatric literature, policy documents, administrative records and financial reports, and drawing theoretical insights from anthropology, philosophy and disability studies, I trace how and why three concepts of chronic pain were formed and embodied during a period when industry and the welfare state expanded and retracted. Such analysis will reveal the economic logics which shaped how the state understood chronic pain and managed certain bodies, but also why this has informed sexism and inequality. By telling the story of chronic pain in modern Britain, my hope is that this project might help us to rethink what a welfare state is, and more importantly, what and who it is for.