麻豆传媒

I am a historian working at the intersection of environmental history and the history of science, medicine and technology. My specialism is in Britain and its Empire in the modern period, from roughly 1850 to 1950. My current work focuses on the history of sleep and circadian rhythms in environmental, cultural and scientific perspective. My previous research explored medical and surgical knowledge along the networks of the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 2021, I published my first book Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility and the Making of British Medicine, 1870-1914 (University of Pittsburgh Press) which was awarded the RHS's Whitfield Book Prize.

I also have a background as a museum curator and I have worked in collections and curatorial roles at the Science Museum, the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) Museum. I am passionate about collaborating with museums and museum professionals to engage broader audiences with research.

I joined the School of History, Archaeology and Classics in 2024. I previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen from 2019 - 2024.

Areas of interest

My primary research focus at present is on histories of sleep and circadian rhythms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, I am interested in how everyday rhythms like sleeping, eating, working and exercising were understood to affect health. I examine scientific and medical texts to consider how rhythmicity was perceived to exist at the intersection of body and world. I am currently working on a book on the history of circadian rhythms for Polity Press.

My areas of expertise include:

• Histories of science/medicine in Britain and the British Empire
• Histories of sleep and chronobiology
• History of the 19th/20th century life sciences
• Museum history, particularly in relation to colonialism and natural history collections
• Histories of shift work and occupational health

Supervision

I am happy to consider research proposals from students within environmental history, history of science, history of medicine, and body history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I have a particular interest in projects that relate to histories of public health, occupational health, imperial medicine, animal histories, laboratory history, history of food and digestion, history of sleep and sleeplessness, and Polar histories.

Current PhD Students

Charlotte White (with Dr Clare Hickman and Dr Lutz Sauerteig)

Undergraduate teaching includes:

HIS1102 History Lab 2

HIS1101 Evidence and Argument

HIS1104 Introduction to Public History

HIS2321 Destroying Nature: Disasters, Diseases and Environmental Injustice

HIS3229 Exhausted! A history of sleep (and not sleeping) from 1750 to the present day

Postgraduate teaching includes:

HIS8061 The Practice of History

HIS8173 In sickness and in health

• Articles

  • Hussey KD, Whiteley L, Martin I. . Configurations 2026, 34(2), 245-275.
  • Hussey, KD. . Journal of Social History 2025, 1-24. In Press.
  • Hussey KD. . Time & Society 2024, 33(3), 307-330.
  • Hussey KD. . History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 2023, 45, 17.
  • Rogers HS, Hussey KD, Whiteley L, Bencard A, Gad C, Abrantes E. . STS Encounters 2023, 15(2), 2-17.
  • Hussey KD. . Endeavour 2022, 46(4), 100846.
  • Hussey KD. . Social History of Medicine 2022, 35(2), 422-443.
  • Hussey KD, Biggins M. . Science Museum Group Journal 2021, 15.
  • Hussey KD. . Bulletin of the History of Medicine 2021, 95(3), 350-378.
  • Hussey, KD. Sir Patrick Manson at home: 21 Queen Anne Street as a Hybrid Space. Journal of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh 2019, 49(1), 84-91.
  • Hussey, KD. Seen and Unseen: Representations of Visible and Hidden Disease in the Waxworks of Joseph Towne at the Gordon Museum. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 2017, 24.
  • Hussey, KD. Ming the forgotten celebrity: a giant panda skull at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Archives of Natural History 2014, 41(1), 159-162.
  • Hussey, KD. British Dental Surgery and the First World War: The treatment of facial and jaw injuries from the battlefield to the home front. British Dental Journal 2014, 217(10), 597-600.

• Authored Book

  • Hussey KD. . Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.

• Editorial

  • Hussey KD, Douglas Jones R. . Time & Society 2024, 33(3), 237-250.