Dr Deborah Brunton's OpenLearn Profile

I made a major contribution to A218 Medicine and Society in Europe, 1500-1930, chairing the course in the later stages of production and in presentation. In 2007 A218 won an OU award for the quality of its teaching materials. I was deputy chair of the foundation course AA100 The Arts Past and Present, and wrote on a wide range of topics for the course, from medieval Islamic medicine to the British seaside. I have also written on twentieth century medicine for A327 Europe 1914-1989. War, peace, modernity. I have taken a leading role in designing the computing components on a number of courses including a DVD ROM teaching the use of visual sources for the history of medicine and a computer game to test students’ knowledge of the growth of seaside resorts.

I have successfully supervised a number of postgraduate students working on aspects of modern medicine and on nineteenth century history.

Jane Berney, ‘The Contagious Diseases Acts in Hong Kong: Imperial Policy Versus Local Governance.’

Julia Matheson, PhD ‘Common Grounds. Working-Class Horticulture in the East End of London, 1840-1914’  completed 2011.

Susan Knowles, ‘A Regional Study of the Relationships between Workhouses, Hospitals and Anatomists in East Anglia following the 1832 Anatomy Act’ Ph.D completed 2010.

Catherine Lee, ‘The Contagious Diseases Act in Kent,’ Ph.D, completed 2008. Published as Policing Prostitution, 1856–1886 Deviance, Surveillance and Morality London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012.

John MacKeith, ‘The Early Careers of Scottish Medical Graduates in the Nineteenth Century’, M.Phil, completed 2005.

Peter Higgins, ‘Medical Care in Prisons in the early Nineteenth century’, Ph.D, completed 2004. Published asPunish or Treat? Medical Care in English Prisons, 1770-1850 (Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2007).

Anna Simmons, ‘The Scientific Activities of the Society of Apothecaries, 1750-1921’, Ph.D completed 2004.

I am currently supervising students working on the following topics:

Yvonne Fisher, ‘ The Role of the Coroner in the Nineteenth Century: A Study of Thomas Wakley and His Contemporaries and Their Influence on medical and Coronial Legislation in Victorian Society’

Mia Ridge, Participatory Digitisation of Spatially Indexed Historical Data: A Case Study of English Women Scientists c.1600-1900'

Research Interests

After many years working on smallpox inoculation and vaccination, I am now researching into public health in nineteenth-century Scotland, with support from the Wellcome Trust. The study looks at a range of records from a large number of urban and rural communities across Scotland to construct a cultural history of public health, re-examining the motivation behind sanitary reform, and setting it within a wider project of civic growth and development.