Staff profile

I am a historian of medicine and the senses with a particular focus on how people experienced and understood disease in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I joined the Institute for Medical Humanities in 2025 as a Bridging Fellow. I completed by BA in History and MA in History of Health, Medicine and Society at the University of Leeds and was awarded my PhD at the same institution in March 2024. My doctoral project centred on sensory experiences and perceptions of plague in early modern London. I am currently turning my thesis into a monograph entitled Plague and the Senses in Early Modern London (under contract with Manchester University Press). My thesis research has been published with the Social History of Medicine in 2023.

My current research focuses on sensory experiences of cancer in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. In 2024, I was the Society for Renaissance Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, where I worked on cancer, identity, and the senses in early modern England. As a Bridging Fellow, I am developing this research further by turning my attention to the 'sensescapes' of cancer more broadly. 

I am also a keen proponent of public engagement with historic research. In 2024, I was the Digital Engagement Fellow on the Hematopolitics project at the University of Leeds. I collaborated with Thackray Museum of Medicine to design and deliver a digital exhibition on the history of blood donation and transfusion. In the same year, I was a Residency Research Assistant on the Wellcome-funded LivingBodiesObjects project, where I contributed towards an exhibition on AI and personalised medicine. 

I currently teach my own strand of 'Making History' to first-year undergraduates, where I focus on bodies and diseases in the early modern period. I also supervise undergraduate dissertations in the fields of history of medicine and gender. 

Journal Article

• Intersensory Experiences of the Plague in Seventeenth-Century London
  
  Turner, C. (2023). Intersensory Experiences of the Plague in Seventeenth-Century London. Social History of Medicine, 36(1), 42-61. https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkad006