Co-produced posters long listed for World Illustration Awards

June 2023

I was delighted to work with illustrator and storyteller Sofie Louise Dam to produce a series of science communication posters for our 2021 exhibition The World is in You. The posters have now been longlisted for the World Illustration Awards, 2023. Here is what Sofie had to say:

The four scientific posters explore how our bodies are entwined with the world around us. Together with scientists, I found familiar and surprising metaphors to explain molecular mechanisms. Comics and text around the core add nuance and story or point out limitations to our knowledge. Handpainted and a with a poetic tone, they focus on the human aspect rather than science as objective truth.

You can read more about the nomination here.

The World is in You wins Danish interpretation prize

March 2023

We are absolutely delighted that our exhibition The World is in You has been awarded the Danish Formidlingsprisen 2022.

Blending science, contemporary art, and historical objects the exhibition explored how our bodies are connected to the world in and around us. On the themes of microbes, generations and time, the exhibition drew directly on science at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR).

Karen Bech Jessen, spokesperson for the Association of Museum Communicators in Denmark (MiD) who award the prize, explained:

 "With their exhibition and dissemination project 'The World is in You, Medical Museion has managed in an exemplary way to convey something as difficult as new biomedical research. By including culture, art, history, biology, philosophy and several other disciplines, they have opened the door for the audience to new understandings of their body and its connection with the world. They have managed to convey complex knowledge, understanding and research in a very versatile, creative and serious combination which also shows that collaboration can strengthen communication.”

You can read more here.

Open Access publication on interdisciplinary exhibition-making

January 2023

The World is in You was an exhibition about our entangled bodies and how our milieu impacts our health, in the past and now. Moving across art, science and history, rather than providing answers it aimed to provoke questions. In practice, making the exhibition involved working across disciplines, bringing together scientists and artists, making new commissions, and incorporating academic research into a public-display.

In the publication, the exhibition team reflect on different aspects of the exhibition from text writing to content to design, art commissioning and audience research. It is part catalogue, part academic publication and part ‘how to’ that we hope will be interesting to anyone working in interdisciplinary exhibitions. I was very pleased to contribute chapters on visitor research, on curating time, and on the commission of the artwork ‘Time Animals’.

You can download the publication here.

Featured on Edy Hurt’s comedy War of the Worlds podcast

January 2023

They live in the soil, they live in the air, they'll more or less live anywhere, it's germs!

As we've heard in the last chapter, those invisible assailants have done us a big kindness in the War of the Worlds, but are they always friendly tiny buds helping us out? If 2020 - now have shown us anything, no!Intentions of the forces of nature aside, in a special none chapter episode, Edy sits down to speak with Historian, Curator and Author Dr. Kristin Hussey about the history of germ theory, and what H.G. Wells' would have known whilst writing the novel.

You can listen to this and further episodes here.

New exhibition catalogue on light and art for Bornholm Art Museum

September 2022

I was interviewed by Tine Nygaard, the Head of Exhibitions at Bornholms Art Museum in Denmark, about the recent exhibition of artist Ruth Campau’s monumental work, Sunset Boulevard.

Featured as a part of the Museum’s recent catalogue publication, the interview explores my own interpretation of the work from the perspective of chronobiology. Translated in both English and Danish, we explore how circadian rhythms influence our daily lives, and how Campau’s flowing sculpture captures the essence of the day-night rhythm.

To see more of the catalogue, visit Narayana Art Books.

Patented podcast on the history of Daylight Saving Time with Dallas Campbell

June 2022

Introduced just over 100 years ago, Daylight Savings have always been divisive. So, why are people for and why are people against — and how have those arguments changed over time?

I was delighted to be invited by Dallas Campbell to speak about the invention of Daylight Saving Time for the History Hit podcast Patented: History of Inventions.

In this episode we explore where the idea came from, why DST was and remains so contentious, and what health has to do with it.

Check out the podcast here.

New Wellcome Digital Stories commission for ‘Eugenics and other stories’

September 2022

I was so excited to be asked to contribute an essay for Subhadra Das’s new Wellcome Stories series on the theme of ‘Eugenics and other stories’.

As the series introduction states, ‘The history of eugenics, though, is much longer and more complex than we often get to think about. For this series of essays, writer and historian Subhadra Das invited five historians and museum curators to share their research about the history of education, medicine and the welfare state, and help us to think about what the legacies of eugenic thinking mean for our lives today.’

I was invited to contribute a piece inspired by my recent book Imperial Bodies in London - and together Subhadra and I agreed that the theme of ‘sunstroke insanity’ had a strong resonance with the series themes. The diagnosis of ‘sunstroke insanity’ provokes a dense series of connections between imperialism, environment, and race - all set at the heart of empire, London. Personally, it was an exciting challenge to re-tell a piece of academic research in a more accessible and journalistic style. The content here is undoubtedly troubling and upsetting - but it is this very discomfort that Subhadra hoped to raise through the series.

You can find the piece here.

With thanks to the illustrator for the beautiful collages inspired by my writing and to digital editor Dr Alice White for her editorial assistance,

Winner of the 2022 Whitfield Book Price

July 2022

I am so pleased to announce that my first book, Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914 has been awarded the Whitfield Book Prize for 2022. This Prize is awarded by the Royal Historical Society for first books on the subject of British and Irish history. For me it is an incredible honour to receive such an award - particularly for a book in the history of medicine, and one whose aim was to show that imperial history is British history.

You can find out more about the award and see my acceptance speech by visiting the project page on this website.

My many thanks to the judges of the Whitfield Prize, and also the entire team at the University of Pittsburgh Press who made this book a reality!

New Blog: Cave experiments in chronobiology

April 2022

Ask a chronobiologists about the history of the discipline, and you find that specific places are central to it…

In a blog for the Medical Museion I introduce a new research project on ‘Timeless spaces’, where I explore field experiments in early chronobiological research. In this post, I dive into the cave as an iconic space of chronobiology, asking what makes it a ‘natural laboratory’ for the study of human rhythms. This is a shorter and more approachable version of a paper that will be delivered at the European Society for the History of Science conference in September 2022.

You can read the blog here.

Visualizing Rhythmicity: Body time across art and science

December 2021

I was delighted to act as moderator at this in-conversation held at Kunsthal Charlottenborg on 6 December 2021, as a part of the public programme for the exhibition The World is in You. I was joined by British artist Susan Morris and American scientist Zach Gerhart-Hines for a dynamic discussion on how artists and scientists work to make visible the invisible rhythms of our lives.

A recording of the event is available here.

We live our lives in a rhythm. We wake and sleep, move and rest, eat and fast. The ups and downs of our days can be masked by the regular ticking of the clock. So how can we capture the rhythmic nature of life? In different ways, both artists and scientists have been interested in recording and communicating the rhythms of the body. Scientists gather data in the lab which must be transformed in to compelling visual arguments for science journals, while artists experiment with methods for recording and visualizing the routines of everyday life in a highly artificial world.

In this conversation inspired by The World is in You, artist Susan Morris and scientist Zach Gerhart-Hines will discuss how they attempt to capture and share rhythmicity – and what this means for how we understand ourselves in the world.

Interviewed by Washington Post on anti-vaxx movement

December 2021

I spoke to Washington Post journalist Jess McHugh about the history of the anti-vaccination movement in England for a new article available here.

This piece explores the development of the anti-vaccination movement in England from the discovery of vaccines by Edward Jenner in 1796. Including insights from Yale historian Frank Snowdon, McHugh takes a critical look at the social, political, and economic contexts surrounding organized protests and dissent against compulsory vaccination in 19th century Britain.

Following the mandate, the protests were no longer limited to the vaccine itself. Rather, the vaccine became a magnet for broader distrust in government. “Like today, people in the middle part of the 19th century, when vaccination is made compulsory, are experiencing an enormous upheaval in terms of the political environment, the scientific and medical environment, technological change, new information, new connectedness — everything is changing so fast,” said Kristin Hussey, a historian of medicine and author of “Imperial Bodies in London.” “Vaccination really becomes a lightning rod for a lot of these concerns around the individual and the state.”

New Podcast: Does the body know what time it is?

December 2021

This podcast episode is a part of a series inspired by the exhibition The World is in You, hosted in collaboration with Danish news and cultural outlet Politiken. I spoke to host Astrid Hald about how people have experienced circadian disruption throughout history from artificial lighting to the Industrial Revolution. The episode also features interviews with Zach Gerhart-Hines and Isabella Martin. The narrative description is in Danish but the interviews are done in English - so speakers of both languages should be able to enjoy it.

Click here to find the episode!

The body has an internal clock that binds us to the rhythm of the planet - right down into our cells. It is explored in the so-called chronobiology or circadian biology , which studies circadian rhythms in the body on a molecular level - which apparently plays a role in the body's physiological life. It is a field that raises major questions about both individual health and societal structures - for example, how does electric light, shift work, and changing eating patterns affect the body?

Interview Dr. Joe Krulder for the New Books Network

November 2021

Where does the book name’s come from? What was the most exciting archive discovery? How did I approach my sources? Find out the answers to these questions and more in this fun interview with Joe Krulder for the New Books Network podcast.

Digital Book Launch: Imperial Bodies in London

November 2021

We celebrated the official publication of Imperial Bodies in London with a lively conversation with writer, curator and comedian Subhadra Das. A recording of the event is available here.

Join Kristin Hussey and Subhadra Das in this free, digital event to celebrate the publication of Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility and the Making of British Medicine (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021). In this new book by Kristin Hussey, she takes us on a journey through the imperial city of London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to demonstrate how empire was (and is) at the heart of British medicine. Bringing together the history of medicine, history of empire, and the tools of geography – Imperial Bodies in London follows the mobile lives of sailors, doctors, missionaries, administrators, and soldiers to reveal the everyday experiences of being a body in the networks of empire.

This one-hour event will be hosted by curator, researcher and comedian Subhadra Das in conversation with Kristin Hussey. Attendees will also have the chance to win a free copy of the book.

Bloom Festival

June 2021

I was delighted to participate in Copenhagen’s Bloom Festival - an outdoor celebration of nature and science, bringing together researchers with artists, poets, and musicians. I spoke on the panel ‘Body Time is Planet Time’ alongside visual artist Isabella Martin and chronobiologist Zachary Gerhart-Hines. In our hour-long conversation, we explored how our body clocks connect us to our environment, how the development of technology has changed this relationship, and what the future might hold.

The Time of the Body

November 2020

This public event was a part of the events program for The World is in You. You can watch the event here.

Your body is connected to the temporal rhythms of the planet. During these years, there is intense research into how our cells measure and respond to the passage of time. It is a field of research that raises major questions about both individual health and societal structures - how do electric light, shift work and altered eating patterns play into the body's physical time and into our experience of time? In this talk, associate professor of microbiology Zachary Gerhart-Hines and curator Kristin Hussy meet for a conversation about time in the body.

Zachary Gerhart-Hines is an associate professor of microbiology at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research. Kristin Hussey is a historian and researcher at the Medical Museum and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research.

Light Switch

November 2020

This talk on the history of our relationship with artificial light was a part of a Science Gallery, Dublin public seminar called Light Switch. You can watch the talks here.

How is electric light impacting our health? And what subtle changes are we experiencing as a species? Join us for LIGHT SWITCH on 28 November - a collaborative one-day online symposium produced by the Design History Society and Science Gallery Dublin to coincide with the closing of our exhibition INVISIBLE.

We think of electric light as enabling visibility but it also blinds us. Light pollution eliminates darkness from our skies and our panorama of the stars and universe is lost. Light Switch will take you on the journey of how our lives have changed with this technology with two sessions: Electric Light in the Home and Electric Light in the City.

Speakers include design historians Sorcha O’Brien and Lisa Godson, historian Kristin Hussey, chronobiologist Andrew Coogan alongside physicist Brian Espey and architect Donal Lally. Speakers will provide a multidimensional look at how electric light has redesigned our lives, the spaces we live in and the impact of removing darkness from our lives. After the six presentations, the contributing speakers will speculate upon how we might design for light and dark in everyday life.

Science Stories - Sophia Jex-Blake

December 2019

Naomi Alderman tells the science story of Sophia Jex-Blake, who led a group known as the Edinburgh Seven in their bid to become the first women to graduate as doctors from a British university. Her campaign was long and ultimately personally unsuccessful as she had to go to Switzerland to gain her qualification. Although Edinburgh University allowed the Seven to attend some lectures, they had to be taught apart from the male students. There was great antipathy to the women which culminated in 1870 with a riot as they tried to take an exam.

Naomi discusses Sophia Jex-Blake's life and times with Dr Kristin Hussey who curated an exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians about women in medicine.

And Dr Fizzah Ali from the Medical Women's Federation talks about women's careers in medicine today.

‘This vexed question’ curator tour

November 2018

You can view the exhibition tour here.

Join Dr Kristin Hussey and Briony Hudson on this curator’s tour of ‘This vexed question’: 500 years of women in medicine. This temporary exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) marked the RCP’s 500th anniversary as well as other historic milestones including NHS70, Vote100 and the centenary of the First World War. In this film, Kristin and Briony explore the stories of pioneering medical women as well as unsung heroes. Delving into themes including gender norms, the suffragette movement, medicine in early modern London and interrogating who really was Britain’s first woman doctor – the exhibition explored ‘the vexing question’ of women in medicine from 1518 to 2018.

‘Women still fighting to get their dues’ - The Guardian

September 2018

This article for the Guardian was inspired by ‘This vexed question’: 500 years of women in medicine and asks how far the struggle for gender equality in medicine has really come.

Co-authored by Anne Hanley. Read it here.

Drills, Dentures and Dentistry with Joanna Bourke

July 2014

I was delighted to be interviewed about my research on First World War maxillo-facial surgery for this documentary. You can watch it here.

Professor Joanna Bourke charts how, over the past five centuries, dentistry has been transformed from a backstreet horror show into a gleaming modern science. During her journey into dentistry's past, Joanna uncovers how a trip to the dentist's in medieval England could mean much more than a haircut, reveals how a First World War general's toothache would transform British oral surgery, and discovers the strange story of how the teeth of soldiers killed at Waterloo ended up in the mouths of London's rich.