Why history matters to medicine Professor Fay Bound Alberti, King's College London
Event details
Royal Historical Society Lecture
Face transplants have been a surgical reality since 2005, but ideas about face transplants, and their surgical origins, have a much longer history. In this lecture Professor Fay Bound Alberti explores the history and practice of face transplants as a surgical approach to severe facial trauma. As the PI of Interface, an interdisciplinary research project grounded in History, Fay also considers what the discipline and practice of history – especially the history of emotions – brings to modern surgical practice.
Fay's lecture is a partnership between the Royal Historical Society and the universities of York and York St John. It forms the conclusing event in the Society's day visit to York on the theme of 'History Matters'. The event will be followed by a reception at the University of York.
Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash
About the speaker
Fay Bound Alberti is Professor in Modern History at King's College London and Director of the Centre for Technology and the Body at KCL. A specialist in the histories of the body, medicine, emotion and gender, Fay is known for her interdisciplinary approach to the past, drawing on sociology, anthropology, literary and gender theory.
Her books include: Matters of the Heart: History, Medicine and Emotion (2010), This Mortal Coil: The Human Body in History and Culture (2016), A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion ( 2019, all OUP), and the 2021 edited collection, Germs and Governance: the Past, Present and Future of Hospital Infection (MUP). Her current major research project, Interface, shows how important the humanities are for understanding surgical innovation, guiding medical practice and evaluating patient experience.
Fay is also the Director of the Centre for Technology and the Body, one of three centres that are affiliated to the Digital Futures Institute at KCL. The work of the Institute addresses Living Well with Technology – exploring how being human, and living well, intersects with the invention and implementation of technologies old and new.
A former PhD graduate of the University of York, Fay was Professor of History at the University before her move to King's College London in 2023.
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