Fred Cooper

Research Fellow

I am a contemporary historian of medicine and transdisciplinary researcher, usually working under the broad umbrella of the medical humanities. My primary interests are in shame and loneliness, specifically their histories (and futures) as objects of analysis, anxiety and intervention in medicine, public health, the humanities, and the psy and social sciences. Most recently, I have been a co-investigator of the AHRC-funded urgent grant, Scenes of Shame and Stigma in Covid-19, with Luna Dolezal (PI) and Arthur Rose. My research examines how political and structural determinants of health are sanitised and individualised in the stories we tell about experiences and emotions, and how these processes work across (relatively) long historical timelines. Within and around these themes, I have further interests in cultural contexts of illness and health, care work, mental health at university, and engaged research.

My co-written book with Luna and Arthur, Covid-19 and Shame: Political Emotions and Public Health in the UK, will be available in February 2023: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/covid19-and-shame-9781350283404/

As will my chapter in the Routledge History of Loneliness: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-History-of-Loneliness/Barclay-Chalus-Simonton/p/book/9780367355081

I am also editing a collection with Des Fitzgerald on humanities responses to Covid-19. I am speaking next on the 10/11/2022, at the Goethe Institute: https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?event_id=24224312

You can find out more about projects I’ve been involved with here:

https://shameandmedicine.org/covid-19/

https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/beatofourhearts/about-us/

https://lockdownblues.co.uk/

https://wcceh.org/the-lonely-campus/

Or read my work (often written in collaboration with other scholars) here:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01706-2/fulltext

https://shameandmedicine.org/shame-common-sense-and-covid-19-notes-from-mass-observation/

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/QRJ-02-2021-0016/full/html?skipTracking=true

https://bci-hub.org/documents/lonely-campus-exploration-student-loneliness-uk-higher-education

https://wcceh.org/themes/life-course/mid-life-conversations/

https://solitudes.qmul.ac.uk/blog/covid-19-and-the-loneliness-crisis/